October 25th, 2024
Nintendo started to do this playtest thing recently. It was announced earlier in the month, when everyone was talking about that hideous clock. Applications were accepted from Expansion Pack subscribers on a first-come-first-served basis. I managed to snatch a spot from the very short timeframe it was open. Apparently, applications were closed within seconds.
No matter if you were accepted or not, there was practically no information given on the program before downloads went out. Some people figured out, at most, that the application was around 2GB and Nintendo recommended TV mode with a LAN connection. The outlandish guesses immediately started coming out from that alone: GameCube Virtual Console, a special version of an existing game with different networking capabilities, or a brand new game.
GameCube Virtual Console seemed possible, but I feel like it would've been a waste to keep behind a small number of people. Many said that it could've been a streaming app, but 2GB would be a lot for that, wouldn't you think? Even if it was an emulator for a single GameCube game, Nintendo has a branch dedicated to making & testing their own emulators, so I feel like they wouldn't come out with this for that.
There were also people who kept their expectations low and thought Nintendo would re-release a title with a brand new networking library. It's very possible, but I feel like many of Nintendo's current titles don't really thrive off a small community being active. If the game was a seperate version of a game that people may not like or already own, the number of active participants may decrease.
The final guess was a brand new game. I guess it was the most likely scenario since they were silent, and later, very protective about the test. I hoped it was a new game as I wouldn't be very excited for the other possibilities.
The 20th rolled around and we finally got in to the participant website and the download code. The application was just called the Nintendo Switch Online: Playtest Program and the icon is what we'd see in the site. Opening the application will bring up an error about the service not being avaliable yet.
Also, if you're curious if the game appears in user pages like I was, it doesn't show up whatsoever. Playing the game will make you appear offline and the game will not appear on your play history. I think applications not appearing on the play history is something most streaming apps do. Trying to access the eShop page for the playtest will return an error.
The participant website states what the point of the whole test was and how to play the game associated with it. The playtest was a server test for a mass multiplayer game with the goal of trying to explore undeveloped land. The rest of the website explains things that will be covered later in this part of the post. At this point, there's nothing else but waiting for the start of the program.
Note: As of November 2024, all YouTube videos containing footage of this playtest are immediately blocked by Nintendo, so short clips and photos will do for now. If this game does release later down the line, I'll try to reupload the videos again and link them here.
When you start off and create your profile, you get dropped into a tutorial on the basic controls. Here, you're taught how to grab and merge blocks, which will be vital in developing land. The controls are very simple, with ZR being used to latch onto something with your tail and Y being used to merge blocks with adjacent blocks. Grabbed objects can be rotated with the directional buttons.
When you complete the tutorial, you can teleport to the Dev Core to retrieve your first beacon from the Dev Mind. This beacon is how you'll start developing the undeveloped land. You're then told to go to your assigned acre to start your development. I'll discuss more on the general purpose of the Dev Core later.
The main game consists of you trying to develop an unexplored acre of land. You're given a beacon that develops land within its diameter. The beacon's diameter depends on how high up the beacon is, so a beacon that's 100m high will have a 100m diameter if it allows. This number will be stunted if the diameter exceeds the boundaries of the acre or overlaps with another beacon, so positioning is also important. Blocks only need to be developed once, so you can move your beacon without losing any progress.
While trying to develop your land, you'll come across Eggs of Darkness and Land of Darkness. These two things prevent the surrounding land from being lit up properly, which you'll need to remove them in order to develop the land it occupies. They have some sort of requirement before you're able to, like Land of Darkness requires the egg overlapping a beacon that's 50m high.
Eggs of Darkness spawn a single enemy that you'll have to defeat. These enemies drop special materials that can be used to craft weapons. They're simple enough and you can usually knock them out with just your own hands.
This one was pretty simple. Many of them require you to build a pathway with the provided blocks.
Land of Darkness areas are more fun that the Eggs. Entering them drops you into a puzzle. You have to guide a Light Key to the Light Lock, but the way to do it differs from every individual Land of Darkness. There are many different puzzles that the game will use & it's fun playing through them.
When developing, you'll earn Develop Points for every block you develop. You can spend these points on better tools, such as a Sword or a Pickaxe. You can also use these points to level up your Development Level to get access to buy the advanced development blueprints, such as a Crane or Elevator. As of now, I've been increasing my level rather than getting the tools or blueprints.
Another benefit of raising your development level is that you can get a new beacon every 5 levels. You can place multiple beacons in one acre or a brand-new acre if you're able to move out. It's best to do this as it makes developing an acre solo less of a hassle.
Once the acre hits 100,000 developed blocks, the acre is considered developed. The whole area lights up and you're free to move onto the surrounding acres. Everyone with a beacon in that acre is also granted a Development Certificate which lets you name the acre.
Outside of this acre you're stranded on, you'll also have access to the Dev Core. You can access the Dev Core by using a teleporter in the middle of every acre.
The Dev Core is the main social hub of the game. You'll have access to the stores to buy tools to make developing easier, buy accessories for your character, hang out with other players and participate in multiple activities that change throughout the day. It's my favorite place to be in.
One of the activities is the User Generated Content area. Players can put any UGC cosmetics they have up for display and you'll be able to buy them using your energy. You can also demo the UGC kits in the ground floor of the area. It's my favorite area in the Dev Core as a lot of people make really cool stuff here.
UGC quiz in progress. I think the answer is Correct.
The UGC quiz is a requirement if you want to start creating your own UGC cosmetics. You'll have to be in the quiz area before it starts, which is every 4 real-time hours. The quiz contains questions on the Nintendo Account Guidelines, basically saying you shouldn't be making offensive or personal content. If you miss one, you'll fail and have to wait until the next session to take it again.
Another fun place to go to are the message boards. Here, anyone can buy a block that can display a quick message or a game screenshot for everyone to see. People go over here to show off the things they made or ask for advice.
The PvP area I can't comment on because it requires 1,000 Dev Points to enter, which is a lot. Also, there's a display for how many people are playing it at a given moment, which there is always a fat zero.
There's also some minor stuff there too. Sometimes, they have activities to show players how to use things like cranes or pushers. There could be hot springs, which will replenish your energy and health. There's also small games, like a love tester or target practice. These areas are for recreational use and don't give you anything outside of additional health and energy.
Near the back of the Dev Core is where the stores, level up blocks and daily item blocks are located.
The level up blocks is where you deposit your Development Points or Connex Points to raise their respective level. Raising your level will give you access to buy more tools at the stores. There are other benefits to upgrading your level, such as gaining keys to buy stuff at the Dev Shop, getting another beacon or getting more stuff at the Connex Shop.
The daily item block can easily be described as the game's daily login bonus. You can get some blocks and materials from here to aid in development or crafting.
From the left or right of the level up blocks are the stores. There's one for Development Points and one for Connex Points.
The Dev Shop contains toolkits and other equipment in order to make developing and enemy battles easier. Some items you'll have to pay with Development Points, while some you'll need to pay with Keys. Keys can only be obtained by upgrading your Development Level. The toolkits require you to deposit materials to build them.
The Connex Shop contains mostly decorative items. You can buy premade outfits, deco kits, text blocks, image blocks, deco displays (similar to the UGC areas), sound blocks, key blocks and other decorative blocks. Connex Points aren't made from the normal gameplay though, they are obtains by interacting with other people.
One major aspect of the game is communication and playing with other people. You're encouraged to help other people with acre development and hang with others in the Dev Core. By interacting with others, if it's by exchanging developer info or using the blocks they claimed, you get rewarded Connex Points. There's always people in the Dev Core willing to exchange developer info for these points.
Though, if you see the screenshot, you can see the signboards and Deco items using some triangular currency rather than Connex Points. What is this mysterious currency?
This purchase page is for a complementary Deco kit for passing the UGC quiz.
This mysterious currency are called Test Points. These points aren't obtained through the game, but rather the Nintendo eShop. In the stores, you can pull up a menu to buy various packs of these things. The points are going to obviously cost real money, but they were all free to redeem during this test. There was nothing telling us how much these packs could potentially cost.
It's possible to demo these tools at the UGC areas, but your edits won't be saved.
When you get your Test Points and get your kit, you can then go to your beacon and place the kit there to start making your UGC cosmetic. Depending on the level of the kit you have, you can decorate the head or the entire body. You can use various shapes, adjust their subdivisions, materials and colors. It's pretty simple but a lot of people have taken great use of it.
From the Dev Core, you can also visit limited-time Moons. These are similar to the main acres, but the appeal comes from the rare materials you can get. One of the materials you can get are clouds, which can be used as a trampoline.
That's my entire understanding of the demo at this point. I'm liking what I played, but I'm not too sure if it's because this is some limited-time event. It's only been a few days, so there's probably a couple of hidden things that I've missed.
I've shown this test to my friends and they've all expressed interest in a full release. Some believe that it'll be just thrown out and this is just a test for the infastructure itself rather than the game. I feel like that would be kind of a waste, wouldn't it?
When the game starts, we are reminded to take the survey for the day about our experiences playing. The survey contains questions on if we felt like we were making progress in the game and if we wanted to play more the next day. There's not much to it and seems to be monitoring the longevity of the game amongst players.
Japanese imports for the month are here. The items are more varied this time around.
I got a lot of Sony discs from this lot! This auction was for 12 discs: 8 Sony, 4 Victor. Unfortunately, the seller had formatted all the discs so no music remains on any of them. Despite that, the discs and cases still retain their labels which contain their tracklists. A lot of the music in these lists were of western music.
This lot introduces a couple of new discs to my collection. I'll go over the interesting discs & discs that I've used since getting the lot. Any discs that I don't cover now will be shown later.
This is a Sony 60-minute Prism disc from 1997, which is the lowest duration a disc could have & my first of the length. Unlike later Sony discs, this one comes in a very cool translucent-black case. This disc had a copy of 80's Alive ~Yellow~. Since the disc is so unique, I'm not sure if I'll be using it.
These discs are the only non-Sony discs in the lot. These Victor pocop discs came in baby yellow and baby blue. I like opaque discs a lot, but I feel like Victor's choice to make their front label spaces small makes these discs look odd. I've been using these discs for recording radio stations on my MD11.
I love the bianca series!
This bianca disc had music from American Graffiti, Vol. III. They're a pretty popular MD series with Y2K enthusiasts and the bundle came with a blue 2001 disc. I removed the label from the disc and washed any residue. The disc feels so nice and looks so clean, I don't want to use it either! I want to complete this series in the future.
This blue disc had More American Graffiti on it. This disc type isn't new in my collection, this type of Sony Color Collection discs were even my first discs I ever bought. I put Yumi Kobayashi's entire discography onto the disc, including remixes! I had to use the LP2 recording mode on two tracks so it could fit, but don't tell my MD11 I'm seeing someone else.
I also won a couple of Maxell discs that came in a Sony carrying case. I wanted to store my most-used discs in a container, which this case had space for up to 6 discs. All of the discs it came with were used and not formatted.
One of the blue discs had X JAPAN's Ballad Collection on it. The spine label was falling off, so I ripped it out and formatted it. I needed to use one of these for Namie Amuro, as she advertised many of maxell's recordable media. I recorded some of her Super Monkeys music along with the 181920 album. The music would be appropriate for the disc and the year it released in.
Actually, the previous owner already used the other blue disc to put Namie Amuro's Concentration 20 on it. I guess the Namie Amuro advertisement worked on the previous owner. If I were to listen to the music off the MiniDisc and not buy the original album, does that mean I'm pirating?
There's also the yellow disc with JUDY AND MARY POP LIFE and the pinkish disc with two copies of B'z Friends II. There's also the 2 Maxell GS discs, one with TATU's first album and one with the edge hit compilation. All the discs have a good variety of music, so I'm probably not going to format them and use the discs as my own. MiniDisc is so cool.
I also finally bought a remote for my Panasonic MD portables. I originally got a freebie from the seller of my SJ-MJ15 but it didn't work. I thought the remote was too new to work on my player, but I've come to find out the remote was meant for Panasonic's portable CD players. The remote I bought was the one that's supposed to come with both of my current players, so it works just fine.
It might be a little silly to buy a remote when it isn't required for listening, but having the remote can be very handy! As many players don't have screens, you'd usually need the included remote to see data like the song title or battery capacity. There's also the issue of many features being locked to the remote, like equalization presets, looping, shuffling and grouping, which require the remote's interface to enable.
I won this CD single for Dog of Bay. This single contains the theme song and 2 songs from the game. It was a little hard to find but I was really lucky to find a store selling it for only $14. The only other active listing for it was sitting at $40! It's only a single, so fourty dollars for 4 tracks is insane.
Aosora
The main track is the opening theme for the game, named Aosora. I like it. The single also includes the instrumental version, the only song in the game to get one. The song actually uses a melody from Tsumi near the end of the snippet.
Love Potion
The second track is Love Potion. It's alright. I'm not a big fan of the vocals.
Tsumi
The extended version of my favorite track is thankfully on here too. Tsumi is the song for Vivian's & Lilian's stage. I've shown a playthrough of it previously. I like the quiet, soft vocals paired with the catchy melody. I'm also a big fan of the dance performed in-game.
This wasn't the only Dog of Bay soundtrack release, as there was the full original soundtrack release too. It contained the extended versions of every song in the game, but is very hard to find. I want the CD but the only listing I could find for the past few months was $90! The only rips online are on YouTube with no FLAC rips, which is a bummer.
Finally, after almost two years since I found her on a commercial archive...
Rental stickers strike again!
I got ABYSS' final single and thus completing my single collection. WHY is ABYSS' final single released by Rock Records and is the only single avaliable for streaming. The music was produced by Johnny Chen instead of T2ya, who'd been producing the previous singles. The single almost topped Taiwanese charts and released earlier in the region than Japan.
Between the release of Yume no Hate and WHY, she participated in the ASAYAN Tsunku Geinoujin Shin Unit Audition. She made it as a finalist but failed to reach the top cut. If she did win the audition, she would've became a member of Taiyo to Ciscomoon, one of Hello Project's groups. Once she flew back from the Californian boot camp where she held her final tests, she came to realize that her contract expired. That's when Rock Records asked her for an audition that lead to WHY.
So, what's next? While I'm missing her contribution to Platinumhugen Ordian, that anime is popular enough to have a lot of FLAC rips online, so I'm content with not having them. The one thing I really want is her only video release named Reflections, which contains the music videos for her first 5 singles. I want to digitize it in better quality than the one on YouTube right now.
For PS2 games, it's pretty exciting!
I got pop'n music 11! This version is the second-to-last game left in my PS2 pop'n music collection!
It came with a bonus card for AC Carnival! As usual, it's the old magnetic type, so there's no using this on any modern game. Konami should start distributing e-amusement cards outside of lotteries or limited events. There's only been a handful of times when unique designs were sold in the past couple of years.
Suudarabushi is my favorite CS song!
I've overlooked 11 for a while, but the songlist is really one I should've paid attention to. O-YA-GE de SAMBA, Orange AIR-LINE, カゲロウ are some songs from this mix that I like. I also can't forget Space Dog, a real popular song from this mix. サヨナラ＊ヘヴン also debut on this game too, a song that's been in almost every BEMANI series. This mix also includes some pop'n music 10 songs too, thankfully including the Sea Side City remix, 幸せを謳う詩, きえた!? ナポレオン are a few included.
Released in 2008, IIDX GOLD became my latest PS2 game released in Japan.
The latest beatmania IIDX game is IIDX 14 GOLD! It's one of my favorite styles with an exaggerated theme on wealth and luxury. There was a bidding war on this copy, but it ended at only $14. To align with the theme, the cover was printed with a reflective layer on all of the golden aspects.
A song for a Wii game is on my PS2!
IIDX GOLD is the first CS version I've played when I started to get into IIDX. It has a lot of good music on the default songlist. Yoshida-san is one song I like, I like the character too. クルクル☆ラブ ～Opioid Peptide MIX～ is a neat song even though it's only a 9 for the beginning. I can't forget to mention Sense 2007 too, which is a very awesome song.
It's been 2 years since I last bought a game for my Super Famicom. Godzilla Kaijuu Daikessen was a game I've been trying to look for years now. At the peak of my Super Famicom collecting, I was looking at the wrong places for games, so I kept seeing insane prices for it. I looked for it again on Yahoo Auctions and the prices were reasonable, so I bought it.
It's a cute game, but I'm terrible with fighting games. I can barely get past the first opponent. There might be some really indepth fighting guide online, but I can't find one. Maybe a manual exists somewhere too? I'll be the best Godzilla Kaijuu Daikessen player in the Midwest.
Any complaints about it are null because it's Godzilla and Godzilla is awesome.
Lastly, Kirby 64 is my latest Nintendo 64 import! This game was my most wanted Nintendo 64 game to import, and I got it complete for $5 and in pretty good condition! I used to be a huge fan of this game as a kid, so it's nice to be able to reconnect with that.
This level required the Rock/Bomb combination from another level to get this shard.
Like most of my other Nintendo 64 imports, there were save files left on the cartridge. The previous owner made an effort to complete the game, but was missing around 10 crystal shards. I opted to collect all the remaining shards and complete the game. Many of the missing shards required a specific combination of abilties to be brought from another level in order to reach them.
Afterwards, Miracle Matter unlocked and I took almost all my lives trying to beat him. The boss transforms into multiple different types of abilities. You'll have to copy the ability in order to deal damage to the boss, using an ability different from the boss will yield nothing. The Rock phases sucked mostly because the ability itself kinda sucks to use. I like the needle phases the best, the momentum feels just right using it.
The Dark Matter level unlocks once Miracle Matter is defeated. This single level leads up to the boss that I am too familar with. You have to shoot crystal shards at Zero Two's weak points and maneuver in a way where those shards will hit. Hitting the eye enough times will stun, which you'll have to target the halo, which will then reveal the spiny tail where you can finally deal damage. You can also damage the wings to make it easier to hit the eye on the next cycle.
After that, the game was completed on File 1. While I won't be completing the game on the other save files, I will delete them to complete the game from zero.
That's it for this post. I've been playing the playtest a lot, just raising my beacon higher and higher. It's a very calming game and I wish the test was public so my friends could play. I'm really hoping for more information about it soon. It could also be launched alongside the Switch 2? I should probably focus on enjoying it now.