January 15th, 2022

Happy New Year! 2021 is finally over and it's weird to think that we're already 2 years into the decade.

At the end of last month, I concluded the We Love Katamari Perfect Streams. The goal was to get every super clear, every present, every cousin, every meteor, and every rose. Within 5 streams, we completed every goal except for the rose goal. After an additional 6 streams, all one million roses were rolled up.

I thought of the idea a few days before the first stream when I was about to go to bed. The idea lingered on until I decided to finally do it. I was pretty confident since there were guides online to assist me and most of the game was easy enough to clear. It took me 43 hours to complete the entire game.

One thing I hate to mention is how a YouTube bug lost the replay for part 8. That part had a great milestone where we'd reach 500,000 roses. It's the halfway point and the last super clear. After I finished streaming, YouTube thought the stream lasted for over 4,000 hours! YouTube has a policy to not save streams if they go over 12 hours in length. Due to this, it's not possible to see the replay.

I'd want to thank anyone who decided to tune in, even those who watched me roll up roses for 3 minutes and then leave. I don't think I'll ever do this again with any other Katamari game. I could try Katamari Forever as I tried getting the platinum trophy as quickly as I could. Katamari Forever Platinum Stream soon?

I got a Phoenixwan! It's Gamo2's latest beatmania IIDX controller and I would love it if I could play it!

When it came out back in 2018, there was a PS2 connector. To play it on PS2, you would just connect it to the controller port and it would work fine. This has been the case with most of Gamo2's other controllers.

Sometime in September, Gamo2 had announced that they were making a new version of the Phoenixwan. They had also announced that after the controller was out of stock on their site, they would not sell anymore until the new version was ready. I skipped out on this batch as I want the new controller and waited until they were sold again. When they were having their Black Friday sale, the controller was back on sale! I bought one.

Gamo2 never said anything about the differences between the controllers. I was thinking they patched up some issues may people were having, such as the LEDs burning out quickly and metal parts rusting. All I had to go off of were Twitter posts from those who were getting their controllers earlier than me. When December came up, I saw a tweet that said that they had removed the PS2 connector from the controller.

It was only until when Christmas hit that Gamo2 announced that PS2 support wasn't off the table, it's just now an optional feature. You have to buy a seperate adapter to play on PS2 now. As of writing this, this adapter is not on sale. I'll buy the adapter when I can, but it sucks that they didn't bother saying anything about the new version.

They claim to have fixed the issues I mentioned before along with some other things like LED brightness and better turntable material. I played around with the controller with simulators and the turntable texture was a little too sticky for me, but I got used to it.

If you want to know how playing a simulator is like, have this wonderful video.

I hope the adapter comes out soon, I don't want to pay for Infinitas.

New month, new pop'n music Lively rank! As usual, a new rank means new songs. Out of all the new songs for the rank, I only played one. I don't really like the other songs, but I guess it's more content for me.

The new song released for the pop'n quest unlock system is 321 STARS! It's a really old song from when old 5-key beatmania was still kicking, with IIDX being just over a year old. I was unlocking another song but stopped when the new song dropped. I'm far from unlocking it but I really want to play it.

I got a few new AAs and one new full combo! The videos are below.

On the previous blog post, you seen how I bought a MiniDisc deck from Goodwill and fixed a grinding noise after some maintainence. I bought a few blank discs. They're from the Sony Color Collection set, which has this glass-like color casing. I love it. The seller erased the discs, so I won't find anything lurking here.

I put in a disc into the drive and the deck still does not work. It tries reading the TOC and spits it out saying there was a disc error. I opened it up and I believe the laser and motor have died. The disc doesn't spin and the laser doesn't turn on. I tried reseating all the ribbon cables and nothing changed.

I'll probably sell it for parts and use the money for a new deck as getting individual parts for these things seem to cost more than I'm willing to spend. I'm a little upset I couldn't get it to work, but you win some, you lose some.

I bought this magazine called ARCADIA. It was a monthly magazine that focused on arcade games that lasted from 1999 to 2015. The issue I got was the June 2008 edition, which had a bonus pop'n music poster included.

Please excuse the bad quality, I can't get a good image of the poster but I really want to show the entire thing.

Aside from the poster, there's information on the latest BEMANI games out at the time. There's a page dedicated to some new pop'n music 16 songs, beatmania IIDX 15 DJ TROOPERS songs, and GuitarFreaks & DrumMania V5. There's also an interview with the top (and still active) IIDX player, DOLCE. It's pretty cool.

The rest of the things I bought are stuff to add to my slowly growing CD collection.

I bought Fujimoto Miki's Boogie Train '03. It's a song I've listen to for years now and I finally got the CD. I would only mention that, but it's packaged in a very unusual manner, a small cardboard box.

You pull out a tin from the box...

Opening the tin gives you the booklet and the CD. It's weird and annoying, but it's a funny thing to tell people. When I hit 60 years old, I'll store sewing supplies here.

I got Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchesta's compilation album, Best of Tokyo Ska 1998-2007. It's a really fun album. This is an edition that comes with a DVD, which as a few music videos on it. The DVD is region locked, so I have to play it off my Xbox, which is the only DVD player I have that isn't region locked.

I got Ai Shinozaki's debut single, Kuchi no Warui Onna. The title song is a swing song that I found a few months ago. There's two other songs on the CD that I don't like as much as the main event. Outside of that, I wish the CD came with an instrumental version, singles usually come with those, but this doesn't!

I got Kayoko Yoshizawa's 2017 album, Yaneura Ju, which I only heard one song of and instantly bought it. The song was Jigoku Taxi, which is a swing song, surprise! I haven't heard the other songs from the album. I should probably get on that.

I have AKB48's TEACHER TEACHER, which came out in 2018. It's a limited edition, so it comes with a DVD. I bought this to show how cheap these singles can get, it was only 31 yen! Just to put that into perspective, I went on the Japanese 7/11 website to compare it with the cheapest thing I could find. I found a popsicle that costed only 75 yen, which is still double the amount I paid for the CD!

Of course, some pop'n music soundtracks from pop'n music 6 all the way to pop'n music 9. All seem to be in pretty great condition, the worst being that pop'n music 8 is missing it's obi strip, but who cares really?

I had bought the soundtrack for pop'n music 12 but it came all loose. How do you manage to have the obi strip but not the case? I'll try finding a case similar to the one it should've came with to replace it. The booklet is a bit ripped and the obi strip got sunburnt, but I don't really care, the CDs are fine. I'll try finding a replacement case.

A few years ago, I bought an Apple iPod 3rd generation from Goodwill. It didn't come with a charger and I couldn't use the charger I had because it was USB. I found the proper charger at Goodwill. I plugged it in and the iPod says the software is corrupted. After plugging the device to a Mac, Disk Utility says the drive is busted.

I have some interest in modding this. A CF converter for these things go for pretty cheap, but the CF cards are pretty expensive for flash media these days. Also not forgetting the fact that I'll probably have a hard time breaking into the thing. I'll probably get around to doing it one of these days...

On New Year's Eve, me and my friends were going over local TV. I knew we had a broadcast of Korean television here, which seems to be a relay station of MBC. What I didn't expect is them actually broadcasting music shows over here too. We saw aespa performing Savage, one of her popular songs right now. There was another group playing a song I liked almost instantly. I will try to tune in again when they host another show.

Thank you for reading today. In a few weeks, my first year in college will begin. I'll do my best.