April 25th, 2024
This month marks the end of online services on Nintendo 3DS & Wii U. This was announced back in October, which I decided to stream Splatoon's last few hours on YouTube. On April 8th, the service would close at 12AM UTC, or 7PM for me.
I had to use my Japanese Wii U for the stream. My American Wii U has failing system memory and I didn't want to anything to go wrong in the middle of the stream. Thankfully, transferring my Splatoon data was a simple backup and restore.
During my playthrough, the lobby always filled up immediately. It really felt like Summer 2015 all over again. Some people even changed their names to variations of thanking people for playing with them. I saw this one YouTuber I used to watch play with me too!
When 7PM hit, nothing happened. It turns out that, as long as you were logged in before the time hit, you were able to make new lobbies. I thought it would forcibly disconnect everyone and I would've stopped there. I was only in Turf War, but basically every match was just a squid party.
"An error has occurred. Please wait and try again."
In Splatoon, everyone gets kicked to the Plaza when the rotation changed. Once the 9PM rotation went live, I got a SpotPass error. Some people were able to avoid the error, but I was not lucky. That was it for the online service for me.
The SpotPass error seemed to be exclusive to Splatoon, but some people were still able to recieve the next rotation and play just fine. I wasn't able to continue past 9PM and, even checking with my US Wii U, kept getting a SpotPass error rather than a service discontinued error.
When offline, nothing but Story Mode works. This wasn't like when Splatoon was down for extended maintenance, where Spyke and the stores were avaliable. All the shops act as if you aren't online at all. I guess it makes sense since there's no way to use anything you buy without online multiplayer.
"This network service has ended. Thank you for using the service."
As said, every other game returns a discontinued error rather than a SpotPass error. I guess it's because Splatoon's online service works differently.
Seeing the notification pop up on Animal Crossing: New Leaf and Splatoon felt a little upsetting. The online multiplayer of those games were basically my entire 2010s. It's weird to think about cause I never thought about online being cut or I would care that it would be cut. I kinda do care though, especially since Splatoon is the main reason I made this site.
There were also hashtags on Twitter where people were uploading pictures and videos of them playing on their favorite 3DS or Wii U games moments before the services finally shut off. I thought it was really neat that, in every screenshot and video, the lobbies were all full.
I did install Pretendo on my 3DS and Wii U like everybody said to. On the day of the Nintendo Network's closing, Pretendo was down pretty much all day. Once their services stablized, I played a bit of Splatoon. I did face a lot of people in B+ and below, so it was rather hard to rank up. I'll probably play on Pretendo from time and time again, I still need to reach level 50!
One thing I wish is that they bring back Daigasso. They might bring it back, but I doubt anyone is going to play it. The only real way that problem could be solved is if Nintendo makes a new entry, but I perfer it be released on a console with good controllers.
Japan import time! A surface and an airmail package arrived. As usual, a lot of stuff is being sent through surface and a few packages are at the halfway point of arriving.
The first game is Bust a Move: Dance Summit 2001. This is the third Bust A Move game and my first one. I was looking at a list of rhythm games for PS2 and this was one of the last few I was missing. I played it and I absolutely LOVED it.
A playthrough of the game. I was missing a team & stage, so it's not complete.
It's a very fun game! The game displays a list of buttons that you press in beat to the music. It's really simple. There's also a mechanic where you're able to press any button during a specific beat, and that's where the team combo comes into play. Depending on the amount of people who press the same button, it's possible to have a team combo and get more points.
The soundtrack is so good! It has a lot of famous artists and vocalists in game. There's one of the vocalists from Pink Lady, a very famous 70s duo, and DANCE-MAN, who made a LOT of popular and recognizable music with his charismatic voice. My number one song is Red Star, with God of Funk, My Name is Sister "GET" and the Disco Estrus song being super close runner-ups.
The manual shows the single for Akai Hoshi. I think this is the only song in this game to have a standalone release.
According to a lot of people, this was a rather disapointing entry as it didn't play like the previous Bust a Move games. I guess it makes sense, as pre-release articles always called it Bust a Move 3. I bought the first Bust a Move, so I'll see what I'm missing soon.
I also got two new N64 games. Mario Party 2 and Mario Party 3 were both shipped in the same surface package and arrived without a hitch. It seems like Mario Party 2 was played quite a bit, while Mario Party 3 has two saves retained.
You can kind of say I bought these out of spite. I went north to some import store and saw them selling this game for $40 each. This was like $15 total, from someone's house to mine. I know they have to make a profit, but I thought it was rather dumb. Then again, buying them the way I did is also dumb.
I bought another VMU. It was 450 yen, which was pretty cheap for a VMU. Despite being a new generation system, the VMU's storage size is less than a PlayStation memory card, which sucks as game saves were increasing. The VMU that came with my Dreamcast was filling up quick and I didn't have a single VMU game downloaded!
It arrived and, of course, the batteries are dead. I plugged it into my Dreamcast and checked the save data. Nothing much aside from Sakura Taisen save data from 2002. I don't have a compatible modem to make my Dreamcast go online, so I have no idea how to back these up.
The ability to connect VMUs together is a little funny.
I've been periodically buying memory cards and I have accumulated quite a bit!
Next game is Ms. Pac-Man: Maze Madness. I didn't know this came out in Japan until I think the same list I found Bust a Move had this under puzzle games. I used to play the hell out of this on my PSP!
I loved this game when I was younger. Maybe now I can actually finish it.
Lastly, this soundtrack for TVDJ!
I've been looking for this ever since I bought the game last year. I only had a MP3 rip and the CD was listed on Mercari for $50. I didn't cave in to that and just waited for a better deal. Earlier last month, a Rakuten shop listed it for only $15 and I bought it immediately!
This soundtrack is rather unappealing compared to other soundtracks for rhythm games. This copy I have isn't incomplete, that's all there is to it. No back cover and the booklet is only 4 pages long. I guess it's obvious since the game doesn't have that much content to begin with.
Anyways, I shoved the CD to my computer and made a quick rip. I didn't bother filling out all the tags properly, I just wanted it on my PC. It's pretty annoying ripping rare Japanese CDs since they're never listed on MusicBrainz or freedb, so I have to fill everything out...
The OST was made by plenty of different people. CHOKKAKU, who composed many popular J-pop songs, produced the inital 4 songs. The next 4 songs were produced by Koichi Yamazaki, aka RAM from the BEMANI games. The final 4 songs were from Aya Sakuma, or AYA from BEMANI too. The rest of the CD is music used in the menu and cutscenes, produced by Motoki Funayama, who made several contributions to many anime.
I love CHOKKAKU's and RAM's offerings to the OST, but I wasn't really into Aya's music. I feel like CHOKKAKU's stuff was fun to listen to, RAM's stuff was pretty good on it's own, but Aya didn't hit any buttons. Aya's stuff didn't fit with the program or was fun to listen to, it was rather grating.
Recently, I've been feeling like I kind of emptied out Yahoo Auctions, so it's time to get bigger. I bought a Sega NAOMI! I wanted one way back in 2019, but I didn't completely understand how to work with arcade hardware so I passed on it.
I won it for $40 on auction. Untested, comes with the hardware, regular DIMM cartridge, GD-ROM drive, no cables. I spent all month learning each and every part to an arcade board before it arrived.
The NAOMI system is an arcade board with upgraded Dreamcast hardware that uses cartridges. Later down the line, the option to use SEGA's GD-ROM discs were introduced. To use GD-ROM discs, you'll need the DIMM cartridge and the GD-ROM drive, which are seperate and connected using a SCSI-2 cable that I don't have.
After unpacking the system, I saw that the DIMM still had a security key in it. I unscrewed the cover for the GD-ROM drive and I found a disc inside! It's Guilty Gear XX ACore. I checked the security chip and it seems to match. If the drive works, then I got a free game to go along with it. It's also cool seeing as this is a pretty late NAOMI game, it's from 2006!
After looking through my first arcade board, I unplugged the DIMM out of the board and I touched a bit of the inside by accident, only for my finger to pick up a bunch of dirt! It seems like a lot of cigarette dirt ended up inside the system so I had to clean it out. After a quick wash of some parts, the dirt inside is gone.
I ordered an ATX conversion cord and I had to wait 3 weeks until I could even test the thing. I heard using an ATX power supply isn't perferrable since you can't adjust voltages. Voltage adjustment is important, especially if you're working with other JVS boards, as they're picky with what voltages they want. For the NAOMI, it seems fine if the PSU is high-quality. I'm not buying an arcade power supply just yet because they're pretty expensive, but I will buy one if I get other boards.
I found a spare ATX power supply and routed the 24-pin power cable to the NAOMI. I flipped the switch and the fans spun...
The NAOMI logo then bounced down before erroring out. Since I do not have a SCSI cable for the GD-ROM drive, the system brings up the error as it can't communicate with the drive. I don't have any cartridge software to use, so this error is as far in the boot process I'll get at the moment.
I did all the self-tests I could. The RAM and DIMM tests were a success!
The current situation is that I don't have a SCSI cable for the drive and I don't have an I/O to play the games, so the system will throw an error even if I get a SCSI cable.
The I/O board issue looks solvable. I've seen the MP07-IONA-US board be recommended, which allows for regular USB joysticks to be used. Since the JVS standard is cool & awesome, I can also use the MP07 for other JVS boards if I get any.
I haven't thought much of the software side of things. I might get a NetDIMM, which allows for network booting of software, but that's currently out of consideration since they're really expensive and I don't know if I want to go down that route yet. If I manage to find a harness for the GD-ROM drive and the drive works, I'll live with Guilty Gear. If it doesn't, I'll probably sell the DIMM and Guilty Gear.
I know you can use the DIMM board to boot games from a compact flash card, but it seems stupidly complicated. You would need to manually flash a new firmware to the DIMM board and then build a SCSI compact flash adapter. There's also the security check, where it validates the card's ID with the software, which you can only get using a really old PC. You could pay someone else to do it, but it costs just as much as a NetDIMM, so what's the point?
As for a cabinet, give me 25 million years to get one!
Recently, there's been a lot of point-of-sale displays at thrift stores. I bought an HP LD220 just to play with it. Some local business must've closed, there were loads of LD220 displays.
Now you can really see how late I am with taking photos!
Looking up the model number brought up a Python script to control the display. Using that and a foobar2000 plugin, I made the script show what's playing.
Of course, being a really limited display, there's no support for Unicode. You can use other languages, but it requires changing the entire character set. I had to make the script change anything that isn't within the default set to a question mark.