Official Project Update #19

Tuesday, June 10th, 2025 12:59 pm
doranwen: female nerds, rare and precious (Default)
[personal profile] doranwen posting in [community profile] yahoogroups
Tagging has slowed somewhat, as people have gotten busy with school and work. There are still over 5000 tabs to tag. However, experienced taggers have tagged nearly 50 apiece. If we had 100 taggers tackle the project right now and stick with it the way some of our volunteers have, it would be finished very shortly!

So this is once more a call to those of you who are interested in seeing this complete: If you want to help, consider either tagging a tab, advertising/recruiting others to tag (see the boost text from this post if you need it), or both!

I spent several years working on the metadata at the expense of working on projects that would help support me financially, so I've had to step back from actively working on it for now. However, if all the tabs get tagged, I will absolutely be there to sort the actual data. I'd love to see it organized and uploaded!


Actual stats:

Now up to 4.02% tagged.

Available tabs (sorted by descending numbers by language):

English: 3208
Unknown*: 544
Spanish: 387
Portuguese: 336
French: 146
Indonesian/Malay: 131
Italian: 84
German: 77
Turkish: 64
Chinese: 59
Arabic: 54
Romanian: 36
Spam**: 32
Persian: 16
Dutch: 12
Filipino: 12
Swedish: 8
Hungarian: 7
Polish: 7
Vietnamese: 6
Bosnian: 3
Finnish: 3
Catalan: 2
Danish: 2
Esperanto: 2
Lithuanian: 2
Norwegian: 2
Russian: 2

Single tabs available:
African: Afrikaans, Chichewa, Hausa, Kinyarwanda, Malagasy, Somali, Swahili, Yoruba
Asian: Acehnese, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Batak Toba, Bengali, Georgian, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi/Urdu, Javanese, Kannada, Kapampangan, Kazakh, Korean, Kurdish, Malayalam, Marathi, Mongolian, Sundanese, Tamil, Telugu, Tetum, Thai, Turkmen, Uzbek, Uyghur
European: Albanian, Basque, Croatian, Czech, Estonian, Galician, Greek, Icelandic, Ido, Interlingua, Latin, Latvian, Maltese, Occitan, Slovak, Slovenian, Welsh

All compilation tabs are still available as well.

* As stated in a previous post, the "Unknown" groups are by and large not unknown as far as language goes, but they can't be tagged without looking at the actual messages. Most are clearly in English.

** As stated in a previous post, the spam groups will also need to be looked at a little to confirm spam status, but many are in clear patterns and most of the groups won't need to be looked at once one or two are. I have no idea what language, if any, most of those are. My suspicion is that they were created just for email address harvesting, but we may never know for sure.


Something fun:

I've been using Random.org to generate id numbers for groups in the metadata database to give those in the Discord server a randomized peek at the variety of groups we knew about (and mostly saved). Here's one of the fan groups that came up in that process:

BetteMidlerADivineGathering
created 2004-10-23
/Entertainment & Arts/Celebrities/
Looking for a place to stop and talk about the Divine Miss M? Here's your place! Feel free to join, post messages, pictures, files, or even chat! EVERYONE is welcome!
Just remember...keep this place clean and free of hate and negativity. Bashing of Bette Midler or members of this group will NOT be tolerated. Of course everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but if you have something negative to say to another group member, please keep it away from the group...email them personally.
And remember to HAVE FUN!!!
Thanks,
Dusty
61 members

Valkyrie Profile Classic Jobs Part XI

Monday, June 9th, 2025 03:39 pm
freshfeeling: (Default)
[personal profile] freshfeeling
On June 9th, we finished the game!


All that was left in the playthrough was the Celestial Castle and the final area for the "A" ending.
Entering the Celestial Castle.
The main thing we were watching out for from here on out was enemies who cast great magic, which ruins our day. It was bad, but not that bad! I also didn't fall out of the sky before the boss, which is a big treat.

The enemies here weren't bad. I dabbled in using my Valkyrie-toggling script to use Dimension Slip part of the time, but I still fought a few fights, like the Forager.
Facing down the Forager.

I got 4 or so of those high-risk, exploding treasures above pits before deciding I wouldn't push my luck further until after the boss. The butterfly room wasn't too bad.
The butterfly room! We finished the butterfly room and got a bunch of event experience.

Unfortunately, right around the final save point here, I encountered this big red bozo who hardlocked the game by casting great magic.
Big red bozo ruined everything.

On the next pass through that area, I mostly just used Dimension Slip. I got to the boss, Genevieve, who I call, "unclean thing".
Genevieve is an unclean thing.
I tried to be strategic, taking out her cronies and then keeping her health around half so she wouldn't cast great magic. This also meant using Reflect Sorcery at the start of the fight to mitigate her numerous spells. Unfortunately, it didn't quite work out on the first attempt. We crashed again.
Genevieve tried to cast great magic and the game broke.
For my next attempt, I re-equipped a little bit. This included putting Power Bangles on both Jayle and Lucian, and a Magic Bangle on Gandar. I also swapped Gandar's spell of choice to Lightning Bolt. Lightning Bolt has a very long charge time, but I can cast from the menu early in the fight.

This happened to work.
Fighting Genevieve. We defeated Genevieve!

The treasures were adequate here; the Armor of Aleph is nice, and Jayle put that on. As I left the Celestial Castle, I tried to get one more chest in the area with no floor. I was not very successful, falling out of the castle entirely. I just decided that was fine.

I did my last spiritual concentration and watched a huge pile of cutscenes that culminate in the "A" ending's final area. This includes fun parts like this:
Lezard says, "You don't believe me ? Come come now, do we really have the time for quarrels amongst friends ?" Arngrim & Mystina say, "WHO'S YOUR FRIEND ? !"

It also means we get to fight Hrist with Brahms. This is sort of interesting because this is the single fight in the game where a typical player might encounter the great magic softlock issue. I won't, though! In fact, my normal team is here.
Brahms says, "Well, well. This gets stranger and stranger." My team of Jayle, Lucian, Shiho and Gandar faces Hrist. Jayle defeats Hrist with Eternal Raid.

There are still more cutscenes. Some are just... enormous lore dumps, but a lot of it is pretty fun and/or interesting.
Mystina says, "Blech! You're sick, Lezard. The Lady Valkyrie is not a fish!" The part I like here is, "This is all an illusion. But there is truth within illusions."

With that... we're proceeding to the final area for the "A" ending, Asgard Hill. There are really only three required fights left, and although I dodged several of them I didn't bother with the Dimension Slip.

The first major obstacle here was Bloodbane the sword-eating dragon. I happen to know he casts Gravity Blessing, so I was ready for a tough fight. I'm not sure if I got lucky or what, but... it wasn't.
Round Rip Sabering Bloodbane. Jayle finished off Bloodbane with Eternal Raid. We defeated Bloodbane!
This fight was profitable. Everyone levelled up, we got an Angel Curio, and we got the Demon Sword "Levantine". This sword is actually better than Gram for most purposes, so Jayle wielded it. We fought a few enemies heading up the hill, but there was nothing really noteworthy about it. I was nervous about some of the floating cloud-type enemies using great magic, but I took them out in one turn and avoided that issue.

The next stop was Fenrir. I wasn't expecting magic from Fenrir, so I didn't use Reflect Sorcery and there was no other special preparation, really. It was on the easy side.
We defeated Fenrir.

Around this point, I went to the final save point. I took the opportunity to get some status images.
Jayle the knight at level 43.
Jayle has made a good knight. She is definitely the bulkiest, and has good RDM mostly due to her Armor of Aleph. However, she isn't generally the best physical attacker and she doesn't do much to protect the rest of the team. It's hard to meet the knight archetype in this game... but I don't think that's a matter of which character I selected to be the knight.

Lucian the thief at level 41.
In the plot, Lucian is currently dead. In my game, he's thieving it up. While there's not much that makes him distinct from Jayle other than Shining Bolt, Shining Bolt has really helped Lucian act as a useful thief for our team. Like with Jayle, I don't regret the choice of character to be the thief, although I do wish the characters were more distinct.

Shiho the white mage at level 43.
Mages are quite similar functionally and statistically in this game, but Shiho is as good as any. Really, I am quite glad I picked her: I like that she didn't start with an offensive spell and only had supporting abilities. She was perfect for the archetype. She absolutely died the most... which I guess is white mage-y.

Gandar the black mage at level 43.
Gandar was also quite effective as a black mage. I enjoyed his spell selection (only having to replace one) and appreciated his slightly elevated spellcaster stats. He pulled his weight just fine.

Lenneth Valkyrie at level 1 at endgame.
Lenneth didn't participate in a single experience-yielding battle... other than arguably the Akhetamen fight. Kinda. Partly. Most people agree she's the best character, or close to it, but we certainly didn't need her except as the game demanded. That said, my Valkyrie toggle feature that I've discussed briefly made it so we could go ahead and use the Creation Gem and Creation Jewel and someone could conceivably say that breaks the purity of the situation. To that I'd say: those items were never the difference-maker, as nice as they are. The only real barrier was... great magic.

On a related note:
Valkyrie says, "Loki !" while pointing a sword at Loki.
The final battle of the "A" ending has two phases where the first is sort of a scripted battle where you struggle to damage Loki.
We struggle to damage Loki... although we do a bit of damage. Loki teases us after the first battle.
Then Loki tries to get the Valkyrie to kill her friends and they destroy the world and then she suddenly gets super powerful and they fight again.

Loki's damage in both phases is quite savage. He's got some kind of damaging wave thing that does about 30000 damage to the party. I dipped into my Noble Elixirs a bit here.
Fighting Loki's second phase. Using a Noble Elixir.
But... it turns out the real show stopper here was - unsurprisingly - great magic.
Loki casts a big spell and the game locks up.
I think Loki may have some regular great magic, but he also has a special attack called Dragon Orb. I'm not sure what exactly it was that crashed the game, but something did.

This meant doing the first phase plus the very, very long cutscenes again (during which I took a break). I wasn't going to mess around with this a second time so I used my Valkyrie toggle to make it so Lenneth joined the battle and then got partly replaced with Jayle, becoming completely ineffective in battle but negating the crash potential.

You can actually see that the second time I went through the cutscenes, having pressed the "V" key to replace Jayle with Valkyrie, my partners that appeared during Loki's villainous monologue were different.
Loki says, "What is the power of creation! I have but to crush you and the world shall come to an end!" to Lenneth, Shiho and Gandar.

In the final battle, Valkyrie normally gets force-equipped with the Glance Reviver, which is quite a good sword. I decided to unequip the Glance Reviver...
I unequipped the Valkyrie's Glance Reviver.
...then used the "V" toggle to mostly replace Valkyrie with Jayle (note the name at the bottom)...
I used my "V" toggle to change Valkyrie back into Jayle mid-battle.
...and then I equipped the Glance Reviver to Lucian.
Lucian equipped the 6000 damage Glance Reviver.

Consequently, I've got one completely ineffective character, who has Valkyrie's stats, Jayle's equipment, and Jayle's voice... with different names in each of the two combat menus. I just won't use her! But this does mean Lucian has become pretty strong.
Lucian's first Round-Rip Saber hit does 7005 damage.

Now, when Loki uses Dragon Orb, the game doesn't fully lock up.
Dragon Orb part 1. Dragon Orb part 2.

Despite my shenanigans, the fight wasn't trivial. After all, I was fully down by one character. Valkyrie/Jayle literally died pretty close to every turn, getting revived with a Union Plume and thus not acting. The attacks were also strong, so I had to spend some of Lucian's turns throwing out Noble Elixirs.
We needed healing!

We still had a few Noble Elixirs left when we won, though.
Lucian starts the PWS chain that defeats Loki. We defeated Loki!
It is funny that in this relatively obscure, hard-to-unlock but canon ending there's basically no ending at all. I didn't take any pictures after the boss fight, because this is kind of just the end of it. That said, you can watch the little bit of ending and hear some commentary on the run over the credits at the end of the video. It mostly aligns to what I said about the characters just a few paragraphs up.

This game is... more flawed and less fun than I remember. I still like it. I still like the idea of a "worst character" playthrough, too, although it's hard to want to do that with the great magic lock-up bug in effect. I don't think I'm likely to play this again anytime soon.

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buttonsbeadslace: A white lace doily on blue background (Default)
[personal profile] buttonsbeadslace
Photos on Tumblr here.
My only regret... well ok I have two regrets. The socks don't perfectly match bc I forgot that I did an optional thing on the first sock and on the second I just followed the pattern as written. But whatever, they're done. My only actual regret is that I didn't get to find out that this yarn would've had cool pooling on a normal knit-in-the-round sock until I was almost finished with these, since the cuffs are the very last part.
I do have yarn left over though, which is especially nice since based on the pattern info I was worried about running out. Maybe I misunderstood and the estimated yarn was for the larger size.

I finished them yesterday and immediately started on the citrus slice pattern again. I wenr in thinking I was gonna have to give up completely on the concept I was working on, and I was thinking about moving on to a completely different idea, but I got it to work! I ran with it and I'm now 3/4 done with the lemon plush.

(What is the concept? OK so basically, for the first fruit slice plush, to make the segments of the grapefruit I knitted a bunch of separate triangles and then I had to sew them together. The new concept lets me knit the whole segments-and-white-bits-between-them part in one piece and I only have to sew one little seam at the end. Pictures and some more details here.)

After I finish this, I will probably push right on to Fruit Slice Concept number 3, where the middle part of the fruit is all one color and if you want the fruit to have segments / seeds / etc. you can embroider it on after you finish knitting.

Coffee Social Sunday

Sunday, June 8th, 2025 02:15 pm
bedes: An icon of Kabru from the Dungeon Meshi manga, smiling bashfully (kabru)
[personal profile] bedes posting in [community profile] dunmeshi
Coffee Social Sunday is a weekly post for low-pressure chit-chat about anything on your mind in the Dunmeshi universe! Is there anything you're currently reading, creating, thinking about, considering creating, watching or rewatching? Tell us! But remember to hold onto your specific fanwork recs to instead share under the current Quick Recs post.

If you're new, this is also a good place to introduce yourself! We have a suggested template for this, but we emphasize the 'suggested' part. Disregard it if you'd like!

Please note that the comments on this post may contain spoilers for anime-onlys, per our spoiler policy. As for everyone else: if possible, try to mark your spoilers clearly!

Share your thoughts, ask for help, and cheer your fellow fans on! Now, what monsters would be good ingredients for coffee...

Weekly summary: June 1 - June 7, 2025

Sunday, June 8th, 2025 11:06 am
alchemicink: (Default)
[personal profile] alchemicink
I worked late four out of five days last week 😩 this coming week will probably be crazy too. And yet, somehow, I still managed to gather a few things for this post 😅

Read more... )

It's so cool being real!

Sunday, June 8th, 2025 08:54 am
gullwingdoors: Artistic depiction of Katie. (katie)
[personal profile] gullwingdoors
I just think it's so cool being real, is all. I mean, come on, you get to have experiences?? And feel things, too. Wild stuff!

(We wanted to post something, but didn't know what. Luckily, it's always cool to post about existing! You should do it too.)
thepasteldyke: pink heart with pink text in two rows, first row reads frejr, second thepasteldyke (frejr heart)
[personal profile] thepasteldyke posting in [community profile] anime_manga
I keep forgetting to crosspost, and I don't want to spam, but I also don't want to make the post overly long, so I'm using a table to minimize the length.

Title: Amber, like the colour of her eyes
Fandom: Paradise Kiss
Pairing: Hayasaka Yukari/Sakurada Miwako
Rating: G
Word Count: 511
Summary: Yukari didn't realise her eyes would become an integral part of Miwako's latest creation.
dreamwidth, AO3, website
Title: The final beep.
Fandom: Jujutsu Kaisen
Pairing: n/a, Satoru & Shoko friendship fic
Rating: G
Word Count: 492
Summary: Satoru's tamagotchi dies. It's more painful than he expected.
dreamwidth, AO3, website
Title: And the cherry blossoms bloom
Fandom: Show By Rock!!
Pairing: Sumomone/Uiui
Rating: G
Word Count: 344
Summary: Sumomone catches Rararin talking to a cute girl she's never met before.
dreamwidth, AO3, website
Title: Hikkoshi Soba
Fandom: Show By Rock!!
Pairing: Sumomone/Uiui
Rating: T
Word Count: 453
Summary: Sumomone and Uiui finally get an apartment of their very own.
dreamwidth, AO3, website
Title: She took my heart and my number
Fandom: :REverSAL
Pairing: Koizumi Ayame/Matsuyuki Ayame
Rating: T
Word Count: 765
Summary: Ayame is talked into going to a Halloween party at a club for the first time,
and she manages to get Ayame-han and Takayuki to come with her. She didn't expect the emotions it would cause her.
dreamwidth, AO3, website
Title: Don't wait for the tide just to dip both your feet in
Fandom: Yatamomo
Pairing: Yata/Momo
Rating: M
Word Count: 1166
Warnings: *Referenced Underage Prostitution, Referenced Rape/Non-con, Trauma, Asphyxiation*
Summary: Yata takes Momo to the beach so Momo can finally learn how to swim. Not everything goes quite as planned.
dreamwidth, AO3, website



(no subject)

Saturday, June 7th, 2025 05:33 pm
malymin: Duck from Princess Tutu, as a duck. (duck)
[personal profile] malymin

Nothing like getting repeatedly vagued as "a terrible anti who wants all fiction to be pedalogical and thinks it should be illegal to ship Bad Ships" when all I want is for people to stop treating a character who has experienced abuse and reads as mentally disabled as a nonperson relative to the characters he has relationships with.

I don't want to control what people ship, I can't control what people ship. Actually, I'd rather a relationship with fucked up elements be enjoyed for being fucked up rather than brushed off as NBD or treated as completely cute and fluffy. But every time someone with experiences with disability, abuse, or both tries to talk about their discomfort with how the text and fandom treat this character, and how this character is relatable and hits close to home, they get treated as trying to ruin the show for everyone.

I just want to have a nuanced conversation, where media can have both good things and bad things and we can address them both.

Instead I've seen just how little people I thought of as friendly acquaintances thought of me and people like me.

Really ruins a person's day.

dr_zook: (58<3)
[personal profile] dr_zook posting in [community profile] anime_manga
Author: [personal profile] dr_zook
Fandom: Wild Adapter (manga)
Characters: Kubota Makoto, Tokito Minoru
Rating: Teen & Mature, m/m
Word count: 1,307 & 1,480
Notes: Two years ago I wrote a fic for Yuletide and promised my beta reader a raunchy sequel, so here we go. 

Read them over at AO3! And/or chat me up at my DW. :D

hide the fuel that's gathered here is set right after their escape in vol. 6! Click the link for further notes and tags.

Soaked in Fire Two Paths Collide is the promised raunchy coda for above fic. Things are heating up here. ;)
pastelpom: a cartoony-style bust illustration of my character Stel looking to the right with a smile and his tongue sticking out (Default)
[personal profile] pastelpom posting in [community profile] anime_manga
Fandom: Death Note
Author/Artist: pastelpom
Title: Swimming Upstream Into the Mouth of a Bear
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,346
Highlight for Warnings: *Suicide mention, death, canon typical misogyny, etc*
Disclaimer: This is a fanwork, I do not own the characters and no profit has been made from this work
Summary:

The world was not built for you. The world does nothing to accommodate you. Think of yourself like an insect evolved to resist pesticide - you grow in spite of, not because of, the narrative of the world. God's mighty hand inks you in the same way he would an extra in a crowd shot. Fuzzy, indistinct, vague.

You are tired of it.

Why not try something new?

A/N: a little meta thing about misa becoming aware of her place in the narrative :3 still tweaking things here and there but overall im happy with it!

AO3 Link

Tegasword Village menu translation

Friday, June 6th, 2025 10:21 pm
alchemicink: Ryuugi from Gozyuger looking excited (Excited Ryuugi)
[personal profile] alchemicink
Through several screencaps from various places, I've managed get a good look at the Tegasword Village menu from No. 1 Sentai Gozyuger. So I've translated it because it was funny to me, and also I'm the kind of person always trying to read signs in the background of things 😁

(I did not, however, translate the descriptions included with some of the items because my screencaps were too fuzzy to properly read the kanji. Which is a shame because they are probably funny too)

Let's all be judgey about Ryuugi's pricing together!

Read more... )

my tastes are as predictable as death and taxes

Friday, June 6th, 2025 09:54 pm
stardust_rifle: A cartoon-style image of of a fluffy brown cat sitting upright and reading a book, overlayed over a sparkly purple circle. (Default)
[personal profile] stardust_rifle
Me: So, I’ve started watching Kowloon Generic Romance-

The Voices In My Head: So, let me guess, your favorite character is the intersex genderqueer with full body tattoos and a snake’s tongue who wants to get revenge on his rich father and whose sexual practices can be summed up in this Tumblr post?

Me: Aww, how’d you know?

Rabbit meeting?

Friday, June 6th, 2025 08:23 pm
alchemicink: (Default)
[personal profile] alchemicink
As I was driving home this evening, I passed by a house with three rabbits in the yard. One was sitting on the left side of the driveway, another on the right side, and then the third was in the middle. They were all sitting in a sort of semi-circle like you would in a meeting.

I just thought it was funny looking. These three rabbits were arranged perfectly! I wonder what they were meeting about 🤔😂

(no subject)

Friday, June 6th, 2025 04:46 pm
kihou: (Default)
[personal profile] kihou
Watched Paprika on the big screen at the Somerville Theater. A favorite of mine, definitely benefited from the big screen format. Really highlighted how background music and lack of background music was used, which I hadn't focused on so much before.

I do have some nebulous thoughts about how motifs and locations are revisited to anchor the dream logic. I'd probably try to do something with that for a Dreampunk 2e (not that I'm likely to do a Dreampunk 2e).

In other news, I just read Becky Chambers' A Closed and Common Orbit, which I really liked, probably even more than The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. Feels like a strong entry in second-wave robots-with-feelings media, with Murderbot and Ancillary Justice. It had some weaker spots (the heist at the end could really have been strengthened in line with the themes) but I feel like the interwoven narratives and the space it gave the viewpoint characters was very effective.

It makes me think about genre on two different axes:

1. I feel like there are two pretty distinct types of media that often get lumped under "cozy": works where nothing bad happens and character-driven works where trauma and other difficult emotions are given space, care, and value. A Closed and Common Orbit is firmly in the second category, but I do wish I had better terminology for distinguishing the two types of work. "Character-driven" is part of it but probably broader than I'm really looking for.

(Sometimes the former can be nice as well but I do feel like the conflation of the two is often used to dismiss/undermine things like Ghibli movies, Wanderhome, etc.)

2. It sorta feels like sci fi and fantasy have gotten pushed into this corner of needing world-saving violent adventurous stakes as the focus of their main plot, and this can really flatten characters' motivations and make everything feel really rushed and forced. I feel like there's a lot of room for strong stories that are character driven and have personal stakes, even if they're not going in a cozy direction. I used to associate this with long-running series, how e.g. Buffy and Dresden Files felt the need to keep raising the stakes to a point where they lost emotional aspects that were stronger initially for me, but I think it's more pervasive than that.

Meanwhile, we're taking a chill week in Western Mass with Auntie Grandma. Kiddo's at an age where we take him to cool places and all he wants to do is play in the mulch and such, but he did take some interest in cows and continues to be into ceiling fans, so gotta call that a win.

Free Hosting Suggestions

Friday, June 6th, 2025 06:32 pm
craftyhobbit: (Default)
[personal profile] craftyhobbit posting in [community profile] smallweb
Hi, I am a neocities user, but recently I've found that the social media-like follow function, profile commenting and recent activity page has started making me feel uncomfortable using the site. I would like to find a free host like neocities that allows me to create a website using old fashioned coding techiques that is free of the social media aspect. I'm not interested in followers, and getting comments for the things that I'm working on - I just want to create a small site to hold the stuff I'm working/researching, but I keep finding free hosts that rely on premade templates and AI content generation. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Arcade Archives: Ridge Racer

Friday, June 6th, 2025 09:10 am
tepidsnake: (Default)
[personal profile] tepidsnake

This week's Arcade Archives release is... Ridge Racer (Namco, 1993)

Arcade Archives (previous-gen consoles)
PSN
EU
US

Switch
EU
US

Arcade Archives 2 (current-gen consoles)
PSN
EU
US

Xbox
EU
US

Switch 2
EU
US

Surprisingly, the PS4 and Switch ACA versions retain most of the features and menu UI of the ACA2 release on current-gen consoles, but if you buy the previous-gen version first, you'll get a discounted price for the current-gen version, just like ACA2NEOGEO The King of Fighters '98. Four versions are included- Japanese and English versions of the SD model (which used a simple up-down gear shift for changing gears in MT) and the DX model (which had a six-gear shifter and a clutch you need to use to switch gears- in this version, the gears are shown on-screen and you use the right analogue stick to switch gears). Preference Settings include adjusting the difficulty of each course (as far as I can tell, this was a standard option in the game's Test Menu so I'm not sure why they didn't put them in the normal Settings menu, oh well). You can also adjust the analogue control sensitivity although it's a bit hidden- go to Settings > Buttons > Custom Button Settings > Sensitivity Settings and adjust the Maximum Angle of Handle until it feels comfy for you (personally, around 360 works well for me).

Alright everyone, one minute to go, are you ready? The engine's sound like they're ready to go, are you all set? Here in scenic Ridge City, Seaside Route 765 is our racecourse for today, with 13 cars revving up and eyeing up that chequered flag, and you're one of 'em! Our enthusaistic announcer, Micheal Guinn, will be cheering you on the whole way, so get ready! There's four different difficult settings here- Novice and Intermediate cap your speed a little and have a shorter course, while Expert and Time Trials / T.T. expand the course with an under-construction area and use faster cars (with T.T. going up to 220kmph!)- and if you want to win, you'll have master the art of drifting. While turning a corner, let off the gas, tap the brake and quickly go back on the gas and your car will start sliding to make sharper turns without having to brake or slow down too much. Correct yourself before the road straightens and you'll be one genius of a driver! Can you prove yourself as a real ridge racer and beat the lap times for all four difficulties?

Well, here it is, the most important video game release of the year. Only joking a little, really! This is the first Arcade Archives release of a fully-3D arcade game. That's a big deal! 3D arcade hardware from this era is not the easiest thing to emulate, and while there have been rereleases of them across the years, Namco in particular haven't done it that often- while there's outliers like the arcade Tekkens and Starblade on the PS2 version of Tekken 5, they usually go for rereleasing the Playstation ports which are of course excellent but often not quite the same as the arcade version. Ridge Racer on PS1 in particular was an amazing port with a whole load of extras but it was locked at 30FPS and didn't look quite as clean. That PS1 port also has never been rereleased, despite a certain infamous reveal, so the original Ridge Racer has been MIA for a long time.

This arcade version may be missing those extras (mostly the different cars you can select and reverse / mirror courses) but it's got that solid 60FPS and the sharpest texture-mapped polygons Namco's System 22 hardware can muster, and it looks and plays like a dream. Once you mess around with the analogue sensitivity settings in this- by default using the d-pad feels very close to the PS1 version but I think I prefer the analogue controls- you'll be sweving and drifting with the best of them, and even 30+ years later, it's a really satisfying game, one you want to keep trying until you can master those corners and bring those lap times down. It may only be one course with one variation, but there's enough to the drifting that you'll want to get a good handle on it and keep trying. The presentation is great too, with a selection of thumping tunes provided by Shinji Hosoe, Ayako Saso and Nobuyoshi Sano, the bluest of arcade skies and while not as chatty as later games, the announcer has just the right energy to go along with the whole package. Ridge Racer is great, is what I'm trying to get at. You should play it.

Oh, and if you want to see more Ridge Racer promo stuff, I highly recommend ohfivepro's Bluesky page, they've been uncovering some treasures! Look at the size of that Full Scale cab!

(no subject)

Friday, June 6th, 2025 01:03 pm
22degreehalo: Sailor Moon holding onto Fiore's arms, even as her transformation jewel is being ripped from her. (anime2)
[personal profile] 22degreehalo
Fandom events in 2025 be like:

>'Can I-?' Just have fun!! :) We're here to create! To enjoy ourselves! Or don't. I can't tell you what to do! :P As long as you make something vaguely completion-shaped, we'd love to see it! <3

>Use of AI, in any way, shape, or form, is strictly prohibited. If you are caught using AI on your works, you will be banned from this and any/all of our future events. This includes using AI to rephrase sentences.
RNG is perfectly fine, but AI is not allowed.

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