April 17th, 2022

I admit it! I bought Konami's subscription!! I needed it to look at my scores to properly update the IIDX page. I pushed some money to my PASELI account and bought it. Honestly, looking at it now, it's a pretty lame service. There's no real use for it if you don't play IIDX.

The only use for it is to see score data, but even then, it's not as detailed as I'd want it to be. IIDX only shows the clear type, DJ level, score (only PGREAT and GREAT info displayed), and miss count. DDR only shows total score, rank, and max combo. GITADORA, which doesn't require the subscription to see score data, displays everything!

Outside of score data, there's very little else, especially if you don't play IIDX. With IIDX, you can customize your play area and unlock charts from events in BISTROVER that were missed. Outside of that, there's no real purpose. I haven't checked what Sound Voltex (the only other BEMANI game I'm able to play) does, but I don't really like it so I don't care.

With that cleared up, you can guess I went to Round1 again to make use of my $3 investment. I played IIDX as usual, but on the older cabinet that's around. It might be due to the lower framerate of an older cab than the newer Lighting Models, but I have a better accuracy on these things.

4th Dan was achieved! I had a good gauge. As much as I wanted to keep playing on the old cabinet, the 2P keys were a little finicky. I played on the Lighting Model instead.

I might be able to do the next Dan, but I'm not sure. The next Dan has a song that is around 1,000 notes. That's around the mark where my hands would give up. Looking at information on future Dan courses, I might reach up to 6th Dan before I would need to start grinding. I can't pass a level 10! Too scary!

Except I passed ONE level 10 chart! Haha! It's not too hard. I initially had issues with the ending of the song, but it was a pattern that I got down later.

I also played the new DDR mix! A3 came out last month exclusively for DDR 20th anniversary gold cabs. I don't like a lot of the music in it, I only really like Dance Phenomena.

I still don't have the stamina to play DDR...

In my downtime, I played some Puyo Puyo Fever. I haven't actually bothered to play Puyo in 5 years. The most I ever have learned was how to do stair patterns, which I relied on for the Wakuwaku Course. I played until I got a game over from Popoi. I had fun though. I think I'm the only person to play it in a while. I never see anybody on these cabinets.

Puyo Puyo Fever is like a disease. This thing is on everything. At this point, I have actually played every single port of the game minus the Pocket PC and Palm OS ports. I could play the remaining ports if I could. I have the devices, but neither have their chargers. I don't really care enough to buy a charger, so I'll just hope it'll appear in Goodwill one of these days.

I would want to learn some Puyo, but I don't think I have the time to.

This month on pop'n music Lively is going great! The new monthly songs are all by the in-house duo VENUS. The free bonus song is Wow Wow VENUS and the quest song is Squeeze. I tried out Wow Wow VENUS's hyper chart and got a AA on the first try! I got a little overconfident and tried the EX chart and failed with an A.

I wanted to unlock Squeeze, but I was in the middle of unlocking the monthly song from Feburary. I rushed through and finally unlocked it. The song is alright but I don't think the chart is that fun. As of writing this, I have not unlocked Squeeze yet. I'm going to unlock it once I'm done.

For some practice, I decided to play eclale's songs that were avaliable by default. There were only 5 songs and all of the hyper charts were in my range. I played them all and got AA on all of them! First try too! Here's a video of two of them.

I almost got an AAA on most of these...

The scores will be posted onto the pop'n music page.

I subscribed to the IIDX Infinitas course for only this month. I was getting impatient for Gamo2's PS2 adapter to drop, so I subscribed on impulse. I tried it out for a while and I can say that I do not like it. This game is way too grindy for me. Even pop'n music Lively is less of a grindfest with it's pop'n quest unlocking.

You have access to a handful of songs and charts initally. You have to unlock other charts using in-game BITs. The way to obtain the currency is to play and complete missions. You get varying amounts of BITs depending on your DJ level, clears, ranks, and class clears. This whole thing is ruined by how many BITs you need to get to unlock individual charts.

The price for charts are calculated by the level of the single play chart + the level of the double play chart multiplied by 500. With a chart like with you...'s another chart, which is level 9 in SP and level 11 in DP, the song costs 10,000 BITs. Most of the BITs you get rewarded are usually only a couple hundred, so you have to be constantly playing different songs and clearing achievements to get barely a few thousand.

This game does use paid tickets. The prices for tickets are exactly like other Konaste games, 110 yen per ticket, with ticket bundles costing less per ticket. Tickets can be used to boost quest progress for BITs or to play the Class mode. There's also song packs as usual. There are 16 IIDX song packs, for 6091 yen each, with 6 other song packs that range from 980 yen to 2480 yen.

Despite everything, I still got some AAs! I have uploaded a few of them here. I apologize if the sound is a bit too quiet.

I'm not sure if I put a video of me playing Lion Suki from 9th style on here. When I first got my USKOC, I played it and got a A on the basic chart. Here am I a year late with a AA on the hyper chart. Growth!

I'm surprised that I still got the AA despite me missing easy notes. Embarrasing!

I haven't played this song at all. Despite that, I managed to get the AA anyways. Easy!

The bottom line: I actually do kind of regret subscribing. This isn't fun, it's just so boring playing the limited song selection repeatedly to unlock one chart for one song. I already cancelled my subscription and I'll probably stick with pop'n music Lively.

The worst part of all of this? Gamo2 finally released the PS2 adapter a day after I subscribed! I'll try getting it soon. The item with shipping and handling costs as much as a new game! I hate the shipping costs but I guess I have to deal with it.

I got thinking about old rhythm games I used to play and my mind wandered to the Ouendan DS games. I used to play them a lot almost a decade ago. It was extremely influential in my tastes in J-pop. This and Taiko were my first steps into more traditional rhythm games.

I've uploaded a few videos of some plays at the hardest difficulty I've done recently. In these videos, I have an unlockable feature enabled that hides timing circles that gives a 1.5x score multiplier.

As of writing this, I have bought a copy of Ouendan 2, among other things, on Yahoo Auctions. I'm having it shipped via surface mail, so I probably won't get it until next month or so. I don't mind the long wait, it's not something I want immediately. I'll write about it once it arrives.

I wish there was a good simulator that carried the fun of the game.

I've been occasionally going to Goodwill for anything good. As usual, nothing. On one visit, I saw boxes of cassette tapes. I realized that I haven't seen so many cassette tapes on any of my visits.

A lot of it was string, piano, or movie soundtracks. I didn't look at it for too long but I grabbed a few tapes.

I love Tom Howard's solo piano. I haven't listened to the other ones for as long but I still like them. I should've bought more. I hope to find more. I also want more big band tapes, I loved the ones my brother left for me. Maybe I'll find more if someone decides to dump their entire collection to Goodwill again.

One of the tapes I got was a collection of Erik Satie's music, a French classical music composer. The music was played by Jacques Fevrier with some parts also credited to Georges Auric. The cassette tape appears to be a cassette re-release of the vinyl released sometime in 1970.

The art on this tape looked kinda funny. Like, he sorta looks like a goat. I looked up Erik Satie on Google and the first image of him appears to be the image this art was based off of. The cover design is by Edwin Francis, who does have a large credits in his name on Discogs. Looking at his other work, he does make some good covers. This cover might've just been a stylistic choice. No idea why I'm putting so much focus on the cover art alone.

The music? It isn't bad. It's avaliable online if you want to listen.

There was also this monkey plush on one of the carts. I thought it looked funny so I bought it.

It's been a while but nothing much has been going on. The college semester is nearing the end. I have got to study! Finals are next month!