November 25th, 2024
The playtest ended earlier this month. I wasn't able to play much during the last week due to real life responsibilities, but I made sure to play during the final day. I recorded the final hour of the playtest before everyone got booted off.
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.
There was a huge congregation of people in the Dev Core. During the entire day, the activities were 4 of both the Deco parts store and the message board. A lot of people were uploading their last-minute decos in the stores, making messages with the free blocks around the Dev Core, and posting their goodbyes or friend codes at the message boards.
Last couple of seconds before I got kicked.
Once the hour hit, the number of online players became erratic as it started taking players out of the test. The application now returns the same 2321-4994 error from the pre-test period. With that, the playtest is now over and the Switch is getting put away.
Once the test concluded, the post-test survey was put up for the next week.
While the previous daily surveys asked if we enjoyed what we were playing and if we felt like we made progress, the post-test survey had more in-depth questions. The survey didn't really talk about connection speeds or reliability, rather how players viewed each aspect of the game. It asked if the controls and gameplay was easy to understand & what parts of the game we did play and how we felt about them.
My experience with the game was rather enjoyable. I really liked the UGC stuff & beacon climbing. The egg challenges were my favorite. I will say I wish there was some other things to do, like some additional focus on the building aspect for decorating. Developing an acre and immediately moving on is a bit of a waste. There's not much to do once an acre is developed.
There was a PvP mode that I didn't play though. The reason I didn't play was because there was one major issue... Nobody was playing it! Whenever it was at Dev Core, it was almost always empty. Even during the days where the only activity was PvP, nobody was on it. The lack of players seems to be a failing of the limited number of people allowed into the test in the first place.
As of writing, Nintendo hasn't announced anything regarding the game itself. It's most likely getting announced next year if they're for sure releasing it. There wasn't any certain information if our data from the playtest will carry over to the full version, only the mention of a possibility.
New things from Japan came in.
If you remember my post from around July, you'd remember the Akai Hoshi single by Miki Takaesu. I mentioned that she didn't do anything after the release of said single & her whereabouts afterwards were unknown. That's mostly cause there really wasn't anything about her I could find. The Bust-a-Move Fandom page had nothing, her agency's homepage had nothing, Japanese sources also had nothing on her. I believed it.
Then in September, her Fandom page got updated with a sizable amount of information. It turns out she is still active in the industry to this very day, just under an alias. In 2005, she appeared as a vocalist for POTBELLY, a short-lived rock group. I found a rental drop of their only release immediately after.
POTBELLY's only release, CRASH! CRASH! CRASH!, is one of Miki's contributions after Akai Hoshi. I tried finding it on streaming services but couldn't come up with anything. This CD is the only way I'll listen to it.
CRASH! CRASH! CRASH! - A very awesome title track.
I was a little skeptical on if this is really Miki, mostly cause of how was it possible that the editors responsible could've linked her to Milky. The sources include a Facebook page, which had her actual name and a bunch of promotional photography. I guess it was easy to find a match from that. There's also the fact that it's undeniably her singing.
Marriage - Beautiful song!
Miki hasn't been hiding her involvement with POTBELLY, with the group being in her Twitter bio. As of late, Miki had been in High Five INCIDENT, which disbanded last year. I wish her luck on future endeavors and hope that, if she ever tries music again, that she or the band actually release something. I liked one of High Five INCIDENT's posts, but there were no releases to be found.
Next are my new MiniDisc gear. A lot of my pickups are hardware!
This is the Panasonic SJ-MR250, my first portable recorder! As you can see, the device is more packed compared to my play-only portables. There's many buttons and switches around the system for playback, effects and recording. The portable also supports NetMD transfers when docked with the stand, which I unfortunately don't have and couldn't find any listings for.
Portable recorders are very sought after by MD enthusiasts, especially if it has NetMD features, so I'm surprised that I got it for only $15. Granted, it was untested junk, so I don't even know if it works. The exterior has a lot of dents and blemishes. We'll be testing our luck with this portable.
The heavy weight and packed interface makes it feel very professional.
I thought my sidecar would be compatible with it, but that is not entirely the case. While the pins are the same, the positions of the pins and screw hole are different. The sidecar has to be flipped and held at an angle to make contact with the pins, which is very inconvenient. I put in a disc, held my sidecar in that strange position and pressed play... Will it work!?
The display when playing a track.
The disc spun and started playing! The device's non-backlit screen shows the track information, but can also display the disc title, battery life and even a digital VU meter! The presence of a screen makes the remote an optional accessory.
To record, you'd pull the little record switch above the front controls to enable recording mode and choose which MDLP setting and source you want. Pushing the Play button will then start the recording. A nice feature about this and many other recorders is that the analog-in jack also doubles as a digital-in jack when used with a mini-TOSLINK cable, so you can perfectly copy your friend's CDs from their player.
I've tested recording with an AUX cable connected to my PC. I played a quick snippet of music to record. It saved and played just fine, so recording and playback works perfectly! The only thing I can say that's an issue is how loud the motor inside is. Maybe the grease for the worm gear has gone? I don't have any white lithium grease to fix that issue at the moment.
I also bought an SJ-MJ59, another Panasonic device. The design is similar to my previous SJ-MJ55, but the controls are placed on top instead of the front. It was untested junk and I won it for only 11 yen. This device released two years after my most recent device, the SJ-MJ55 from 2002. A huge consequence of this is that the ports have changed, making it incompatible with all of my accessories.
It should be common knowledge with MD portables that remotes sometimes aren't required for basic listening. On my other Panasonics, you can plug in a 3.5mm cable into the oddly shaped port and it'll work fine. This device changes the audio/remote jack to a 2.5mm port, requiring atleast an adapter for listening. The change requires a new remote that didn't come with my unit.
I'm also unable to check if the thing could even spin up a disc. My other portables use the same sidecar battery model, which allows AA batteries to be used instead of the dying breed of gumstick batteries. This one uses a brand new sidecar that wires up to the side. Unlike the one I have, there appears to be an actual pinout rather than just postive and negative.
All this seems to be an attempt to make the portables thin & simple. The device doesn't even have a hold switch for the console controls, which would prevent accidental controls from happening. The gumstick battery compartment is the only thing in the device that jolts out of the otherwise flat system. Despite these really odd changes, I'm a pretty big fan of how pretty it is.
For now, this player will have to sit and wait until I can get a gumstick battery and a charger. It's a very clean device, with even the battery terminals lacking corrosion, so I assume it'll work just fine. It's pretty stupid to go this long without buying a gumstick battery for my portables.
A couple of discs came in this month too, all Sony 2000 Neige discs. They came in a plastic case and only totalled up to 11 yen. All but one disc had tracks in them. It also came with the original labels for the discs and the case. I probably won't use the labels if they're all perfectly intact.
Surprisingly, nearly all the tracks on the discs are named! I'm shocked as all the tracks are recorded in LP4, which means you get 5 hours of music off one 80-minute disc! With the help of NetMD GUI, it's possible to extract all the music titles into a simple text format. You can access all the disc listings here.
I finally bought an MP07-IONA for my Sega NAOMI. The situation with the arcade board was that games wouldn't boot since I didn't have an I/O board. You're usually expected to spend a couple hundred on a traditional I/O, but I don't have a cabinet. Many people recommended the MP07-IONA, which allows USB controllers to be used on JVS systems. There's many clones out there, so I got one.
Despite using the same connector, the JVS port is not the same as USB!
The IONA is a really small device. There's the JVS port that hooks directly to the board and two regular USB ports that various input devices plug into, depending on the type of controller desired. Once powered from the USB-C power supply, it'll start to flash green until it could find a board to talk to.
The IONA is a really small device. The JVS port hooks directly to the board using a USB-A cable, and two USB ports that the controllers will plug into. You can use something like an Xbox or PlayStation controller and it'll map the inputs accordingly. The page also allows unique controllers too, like keyboards for mahjong input or gun controllers.
Once the NAOMI starts up and the IONA pairs with it, the IONA's LED will stop flashing. The test menu reports that the IONA is working. The input tests also show that my controller is functioning just fine aswell. There shouldn't be anything else that'll get in the way of a successful boot.
I don't have many ways to capture VGA...
The GD-ROM drive loaded up Guilty Gear XX and I see the arcade region warning screen! After 9 months, I made a working setup of a NAOMI that was deemed junk. I'm excited that this is my first working arcade board setup!
There's issues with the VGA capture card I'm using, so colors look really off...
If I wanted to play Guilty Gear XX, I can do so at any time. I'm not too big on arcade fighting games though, so I'll think I'll just find another game to play. The prices of games are expensive, with the cheapest games usually being the games that require extremely specific setups or sports games. It'll probably be a while until I can find a listing with a game I like.
There's also the option of a NetDIMM setup though. They get listed often, but due to their ability to load games off the network rather than disc or cartridge, they see a lot of attention. I usually see completed listings end at around ¥10,000 to ¥20,000. It's a lot, but you're able to use a PC to send the NetDIMM any kind of NAOMI software, so it's a good investment in the long run.
As of writing, I have 15 MiniDiscs recorded with my own stuff. Since I'm constantly getting discs and I own many discs of the same style, I had to make labels for them. There's very little good resources online for labels, either the labels are too generic or aren't the right size. Thankfully, this blog post from nearly twenty-years ago had the best template I've seen so far. This template was the perfect size for both the disc's front and spine. The only issue was that it required Photoshop.
I've never used Photoshop in my life, so this entire project was a learning course on the most basic things in the program. It's very embarrassing to look up where the eyedropper was, even though it's on the left toolbar. As time went on, I got used to applying masks and the various tools that aren't avaliable in Paint.NET. It feels awesome being able to edit effects or text after creating them. I had a lot of fun making the labels! I'd take the time to learn the program if I could.
I think they turned out pretty alright for a first. I used an inkjet printer with Avery 53202 sticker paper. I don't have a lot of crafting tools, so I had to use scissors to cut the labels resulting in a very shoddy look. Despite my amateur craftsmanship, I'm very proud of the end result. It's very nice seeing my discs have some sort of personality to them.
Next time I do this, I'd want to have a proper paper cutter & protection for the labels. I feel like I can easily pull the sticker apart. I heard pigment-based inkjet printers don't play too well with glossy paper, so that might be out of the question. I could instead laminate the pages, but I'm concerned about the thickness of the label possibly interfering with the players. I'll play around with the idea in the future.