Year 2: July Update

Although it does not seem like it, it's already been about a month since the last update. I mentioned last time I wanted to make a LEGO video and I have been working on that this past week. I'm still missing a piece and mini-figures of what I want to show but the structure is 99% built. One key piece is a winch that I do have, it's just so tangled I'm struggling to get it unraveled. I may have to cut the string and replace it as there is no way I can even tell what's what since a second winch is involved. My recording room is a big mess right now too with LEGO toys all over the place as I'm trying to sort through them.

An impossible entanglement.

Mini-figures from the '80s!

It's been a full year since I launched the YouTube channel and I'm actually still going which is kind of surprising. Hopefully I'll have two videos up in the next eight days as I aim to post an Intellivision game video next week too with a brief blog post to accompany that. I don't usually do blog posts with "Let's Play" videos but I want to tie a few related things together with that video. The last gaming video I posted has no commentary; it's for Splashdown on the original Xbox where I try a variety of courses with most of the characters and then show one ending to the game. Splashdown is a game I played a lot on PlayStation 2 and then acquired a copy (with a shirt) from the publisher for Xbox so I played it again. Developed by racing specialists Rainbow Studios, it is one of the best Jet Ski titles and is still fun today.

Wrinkled Splashdown shirt for members of the press.

Published by Infogrames under the Atari brand.

As far as modern games, I've played a couple of smaller digital PC games over the past few weeks in Mini Metro and Letter Quest Remastered. Mini Metro doesn't end though I did go through all of the maps which are very simplistic as is the game but it's charming. I did complete Letter Quest which unfortunately doesn't have much of a story. It is similar to a combination of Boggle and Scrabble without a board. Players spell words to defeat enemies and do that over and over and over until the game ends. On PlayStation 4 I completed God of War though there is a lot of content in the game and I did not see it all as I'm under 50% completion. I've been messing around in Yakuza Kiwami lately. Back on PlayStation 2 I did finish the original Yakuza and I hadn't planned on playing the story a second time though I've been hooked as there is a decent amount of new content, most notably the pocket circuit racing that can also be found in Yakuza 0, more Majima, and fighting stances.

You might have noticed the site ads are gone. There were only ever three displayed and I don't think they were intrusive. However, they weren't generating any income so I disabled them. For the game ads, those continue to go well and I probably have another year's worth of publishers to get through, plus some extra stuff after that. I'm estimating it will be about six months before I post Sega's ads which will be a week dedicated to Sega, possibly one of two next year as the 20th anniversary of the U.S. Dreamcast is a little over a year away. The 20th anniversary of the Dreamcast's Japan release is this year so I could do something then though I'll likely wait until 9/9/19 for a bunch of Dreamcast coverage.

7/29/18 UPDATE: I'm going to delay the LEGO video a week though I did actually film it once thus far and it is close to being ready. I need to retake some photos and film it again to tighten it up, and just don't have too much time left today. I'm not sure how great the video will turn out but I think the blog post will have some good photos to check out.

-Jonathan