This Week’s Topics:
- Rundown Preamble Ramble: A Verde’s Doohickey 2.0 Act 3 Update
- Natalie Needs to Ditch Google Docs (But She Dunno How!)
- What’s An Earnest Evans and Anett Returns? (The Obligatory Retro Game Fixation To Cleanse the Soul)
- Nintendo Switch Hits 150 Million Units Sold (It Might Just Beat The PS2 At This Rate!)
- Onimusha 2: Samurai’s Destiny Remaster Announced (Better Late Than Never, I Guess)
Rundown Preamble Ramble:
A Verde’s Doohickey 2.0 Act 3 Update
I may as well announce this nice and early, because chances are… I am not going to be able to abide by my schedule, which is just going to mess up the plans I had for the rest of… my life basically.
As some of you know, I am currently in the process of writing an overly long TSF body swap novel called Verde’s Doohickey 2.0: Sensational Summer Romp. A novel that I started work on in February 2023 and released the first two acts of in May/June 2024. It is already a giant project— over 370k words long so far. In order to get it done and not go insane, I decided that the only way I could finish it was if I released a new act annually. I plan on having five acts, so that means a release in 2025, 2026, and 2027.
The plan was that I would release act 3, an estimated 200k word expansion, in July 2025, and I planned to start work on it in November 2024. …But it’s February and I still have not finished the damn outline for this act!
Why am I so far behind on my goals? Well, I have been describing why over the past few months, but it warrants reiteration. The later half of November was consumed by getting TSF Showcases ready, as I wound up producing a LOT of long, high commitment, pieces of writing. All of which culminated in my 47,000 word analysis of The Wotch, which included a breakdown of the comic’s lacking presentation efforts and its gradual decline as updates dried up. Oh, and the year-end Ramble was like 30,000 words long. In terms of words written during the last two months of 2024, I was pulling a NaNoWriMo and then some!
This naturally meant I lacked the time and attention to focus on VD2.0, and by the time I regained attention… I was just tired. It was the end of the year, the holidays, and I just needed time to recharge my batteries, my spirit, and just chill out for a while. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, it’s necessary to prevent burnout, and I at least did some stuff during the time. It was not a full vacation.
…And then I spent January putting in 200 hours at my job, which is 100 hours more than what my boss and I agreed upon. Most of this is attributable to a single crypto client, who I spent 80 hours working on. These additional 100 hours loosely amount to the time I would have otherwise spent working on VD2.0. When faced with these 12 hour work days, 14 if I’m counting unrecorded breaks, I had to suspend production on VD2.0 on January 13th, and I did not have the time to resume production until February 2nd.
Another factor that has, and will continue to, delay production is the current political state of the world, and particularly the United States. As of writing, it has been three weeks since Trump and Musk took control of the federal US government, and keeping up with all of the insane and fascistic shit they have been doing has been time-consuming and exhausting. It does a lot to just drain me of my passion to create, and leads me to doomscroll a lot. I have largely avoided that bad habit for a while, but… when my fucking country is falling apart and nobody is doing shit, it’s hard for me to not doomscroll.
Taking these matters into account, and a clientbase that has been expanded by over a dozen more people, I am left uncertain about a lot of things. Including if I will have the time and luxury to get Verde’s Doohickey 2.0: Sensational Summer Romp – Act 3: Worldly Wonders done by the intended release date of July 1, 2025. Will I try? Yes, of course. Writing this stuff and working on Natalie.TF content is my favorite thing in this world, and I won’t stop until I literally cannot do it anymore. Either I get a debilitating head injury that leaves me a shell of my former self (good thing I’ve got a thick skull). I lose my hands— it will happen eventually, thanks to my bad genes. Or get thrown in the gaol, where I would need to assume insanity to get preferential treatment. Which I could do pretty easily, but they’d probably just kill me first for being a faggot.
So, all that pomp about having a schedule? Yeah, you can just ignore that, as these are unprecedented times, bay-bee! The past five years have been unprecedented, and it might just be the beginning of the end of humanity! Who knows! But YOU can change the course by doing something that nobody else is willing to do! If you are geographically close to power, YOU can take away that power in the most efficient manner possible! A manner that defies bureaucracy and law, and only takes a steady hand a few seconds to initiate! …Is AI smart enough to read between the lines on what that means? Maybe!
For real though, people of Douglas Commonwealth, rise up and make history! Treat this monarch the way monarchs ought to be treated!
Natalie Needs to Ditch Google Docs
(But She Dunno How!)
So, the past few weeks have got me thinking about my dependency on certain software yet again. I tend to be rather good at avoiding corporate online subscriptions not for work. I have my YouTube Premium, and that’s about it. But I have been a fervent user of Google Docs for… 15 years now, and I need to make a change sooner or later. Because I should not have so much of my writing data be so easily accessible by the hands of a company like Google.
Nowadays, I just use Google Docs as a place to write things and make spreadsheets. I used to use the online access feature regularly, but in the past five years, I have barely used this feature. As an accountant, I am soul-bound to Excel and could easily switch my spreadsheets to Excel, as it is a better program, and the de facto spreadsheet program for many reasons. Sure, its toolbar placement is kinda jank, but everything just works. If Excel was a man, I would let him fuck me. And if Excel was a woman, I would let her fuck me and kill me. You can call it a corporate program all you want, but none of the alternatives are as good as it, and if I saw an accountant using LibreOffice, I would think they’re a pedophile. Though, I would appreciate a proper dark mode. Or at least something more dim than glaring white.
Meanwhile, Google Docs is straight up the best word processor I have ever used. Word has this terrible delay to everything and is bloated with creative features, a versatile tool, but one that is trying to do too much and does not excel at much of anything. It’s not a jack of all trades, it’s more like an 8 of all trades. Frankly, I avoid using it whenever possible. Also, I do not want to use a Microsoft product for something so damn simple. No, spreadsheets are not simple!
This begs the question of what other writing software should I use instead of Google Docs? Well, it would need to have certain features that I have become enamoured with.
One, it needs to be dirt easy to use. I do not want to fuss with code or text being interpreted all fucky. I don’t want to need to manually add asterisks or <em> around a word to italicize it. I want to be able to center text with no fuss or frustration. Sorry programmers!
Two, I want to be able to drag and drop images into files and just have them work. Now, all these images would be local, but I would not want to need to preserve pathing between the document and the image file. I want to just add an image to a document.
Three, there needs to be some way to review and change history over time and view prior revisions. This is an amazing feature for the writer who accidentally deletes something or forgets how much they wrote in the past day.
Four, it needs to auto-save every few seconds. And this is a hard one. I do not want online backups, period, I just want the software to save without me manually doing something. Like how I don’t need to save when I change settings or file data in my music player, or when I move files on my computer.
Five, it needs to have some way of viewing a list of headers on the left-hand side when in a file. This is a feature I have become addicted to with Google Docs, and it is a great tool to help me navigate massive documents. I know some programs fixate on breaking up documents into smaller files or scenes but… no. I frankly like having big 200k documents only divided by two levels of headers, thank you!
Six, it needs to have a great spell check and grammar editor, because Google’s is genuinely a 9/10. It was a 10/10, but they revised it like… two years ago, and made it worse. I will be willing to go down to a 7/10, but not a tenth of a digit lower than that!
Seven, it needs to be compatible with ProWritingAid, which is a premium grammar editor I bought a lifetime license for a few years back. The software is far from perfect, and occasionally egregiously stupid, but it helps make my writing better. (PWA does not like it when I end a sentence with a number, as it thinks a number followed by a period is a number.) Or, if LanguageTool is really comparable, then fine, LanguageTool integration can work. But no complaining if my writing gets worse.
Eight, I need to be able to copy and paste this information into WordPress’s Gutenburg editor, as I like to minimize the time I need to spend with WordPress’s UI. Google Docs is not perfect— it used to be better— but it keeps the headings, bolding, italics, links, and so forth.
Nine, and this would almost certainly be a plugin rather than a stock feature, but I want it to have a text to speech function with the ability to load in voices. …Or use a voice with the fidelity of Google UK Female.
Ten, I need to be able to easily convert my entire Google Docs library to a readable format with minimal formatting errors. The biggest one is probably going to be the highlight italics error, as when I italicize a word in Google Docs, just by double-clicking the word, I highlight the space after the word. And if you try converting that to markdown or HTML, you’ll get an error. (This is not an error when italicizing two or more words, just for single words.)
Now, what I DO NOT need and DO NOT want is ‘assistant’ or ‘organizational’ software. I do not want to create project files for something, because I am paranoid that bigger files will become corrupted. I do not need to fill out surveys of bios for characters while writing a novel, as I have outline documents for that. I do not want to break down my chapters into smaller scenes. And I do not want a note-taking app. I just want an offline Google Docs clone. I understand some people think these features are dope, but that ain’t what I need.
I have tried Scrivener, and it insulted me with how terrible its spell check and UX were. LibreOffice feels like a Word clone, and I do not like Word. I tried a note taking program called Obsidian, but it writes everything in markdown, and markdown simply cannot do everything I want it to do. Writing in HTML would be insane considering what I do. And while I would love to have my text stored in a readily accessible format that anything could read or edit, I don’t think that is likely. Maybe RTF can work, but I don’t want to invest in a discontinued format.
I really wish there was a good way to find software like this. With a topic this broad, I feel like I’m sifting through a sea of options whenever I look for new software, and the risk of finding bad software pushes me away from any transition. It’s why I am adamant about sticking with Paint.Net, XnConvert, BulkRenameUtility, and MusicBee. Because they work, ya bastard! So does Google Docs, but I want to hunker down and keep myself safe.
…Ah shit, I really should get a Protonmail account too, shouldn’t I? Or should I? Most nearly everything that goes into my email is just receipts, promotion emails, and that sort of thing. GARF!
What’s An Earnest Evans and Anett Returns?
(The Obligatory Retro Game Fixation To Cleanse the Soul)
I always find it wild when a company takes an old-ass game that I have never heard of and re-releases it, 30 years after its relevance. From random old games just being brought over to storefronts like Hudson’s Ninja Five-O (2003) dropping on Switch, PS4, PS5, and Steam. Or Telenet Japan’s mostly forgotten Valis series being given a three volume collection along with official English localizations on some titles. Or, better yet, Project EGG, which is a brand that re-releases vintage Japanese PC games on Switch… and also PC. I was actually going to do a bit about them a while back, but I could not navigate the PC client’s Japanese only interface well enough to see if the emulation was half-decent.
I love it when things like this happen, but I do not always understand the approach, as it is so easy for these releases to slip by when they are not part of a collection or package or the like. Then again, the gaming landscape is so dominated by GAAS and retention pits that these are ultimately labors of love. So who am I to criticize them for their market viability? It’s better to have them than to not have them at all, and many of the things they do can be superior to animation. Like letting you pause and read the manual with English annotations and how to play guides.
Anyway, the reason this fixation struck me is that Limited Run Games, a company I have a love/hate perception of, announced that they are doing a double English translation of two Sega Mega CD games. Earnest Evans and Anett Returns. If you have never heard of them, that’s because they are so obscure they don’t even have English fan translations.
Now, what are these games? I had absolutely no clue, but a quick search revealed that they are part of a trilogy of cinematic action games (by Mega CD standards). And they were developed by Wolf Team, who would eventually become Bandai Namco’s Tales Studios. The first game, El Viento (1991), was a Lovecraftian action platformer with as much anime-like flair as was possible on the Mega Drive during its era. And… boy, you can tell that this was made by the same team who made the first Valis, as it is a great example of the ‘girls running on rooftops’ genre of 80s/90s 2D action platformers. And just skimming through a playthrough… it’s pretty wild.
Al Capone is one of the main antagonists. The first level has the protagonist, Anett, going through New York City and blowing up cars and motorbikes in what had to be the biggest explosions on the Mega Drive circa 1991. She rides on a dolphin during the water level. Meets with a sick 90s anime sorceress in front of Mr. Rushmore. She attacks airships in mid-light. Infiltrating mechanized secret bases that really do not fit with the era. All while beating down baddies with a barrage of magical spells.
The game, originally released for the standard Mega Drive, was actually released in the US, but I’m guessing the publisher, Renovation Products, a division of Telenet Japan, did not print that many products. They dealt in niche titles during this era, and I never heard about it. …Probably because its visuals are pretty murky by the system’s standards, with not the most appealing color palette.
This was then followed by two sequels with Earnest Evans (1991) and Anett Returns (1993). With both being… very different takes on the series. For instance, Earnest Evans looks unlike any other Mega Drive game I have ever seen, and if I didn’t know any better, I’d think this was either an experimental 32X game, or just a straight up fake game.
Earnest attacks by just throwing his whip around in a flurry that just looks wrong, like it is the result of a speed up modification, rather than a slower Castlevania style whip smack. And Earnest himself is… animated like a paper doll. Rather than having bespoke sprites for walking, jumping, or the like, like most Genesis games, Earnest’s arms, head, legs, and torso are all their own sprites that tilt and animate as he jumps, crouches, attacks, and climbs ropes. It does not look good, but it’s damn impressive. If you asked me if this would be possible on the Mega Drive, I would say no.
This wasn’t some feature only available via the power of the Mega CD either. Because Earnest Evans was actually converted from a CD game to a Genesis game for its American release. Which… I didn’t even know you could do! Sure, there are compromises— they took away his cowboy hat in the moai head level in the Genesis version— and the music is far worse. But they still did it to bring out the game and… it looks pretty janky. One that clearly was betting more on its use of high quality sprite art, developed alongside Madhouse, to tell an OVA story along with 5 minute long stages. Cities, caves, secret bases, trains, and all of them end with some manner of boss. Really, the visuals are the key appeal here, and it just does things I did not think were possible on the system. But people would definitely not come for the action. I can just tell it’s imprecise.
As for Anett Returns… it is a single player beat ’em up, and a pretty basic one at that, with simple left to right scrolling stages through a disproportionate mishmash of states, some impressive others not. Combat seems slow, mostly relying on the player to fill up their magic gauge while performing very basic moves. And while the graphics are a major step up over the past two, the game is clearly putting its effort into the cutscenes above all else. Sound effects are weak, the soundtrack doesn’t really fit, despite being an early CD game soundtrack, and it makes Golden Axe for Mega Drive look riveting by comparison. It also really botches the period piece concept and features too many dang robots. This ain’t Sakura Wars, ya dopes!
This trilogy of games are definitely an interesting oddball group of historical relics, but not really a series of unsung classics. So… why is Limited Run bringing these games to… reproduction Genesis carts and CDs, while also introducing a new English dub for all cutscenes? Well, because somebody snagged the license for these three games from their rights holders and is releasing a collection. This story actually cropped up in November 2024, but I did not register it.
Dubbed the Earnest Evans Collection— even though you only play as him in one of the three games, this re-release was funded via a Japanese crowdfunding campaign. Meaning it was intended only for a Japanese audience, but with games as simple as this, with stories mostly facilitated via cutscenes, it makes sense to fund a localization as well. Because a hecka lot more people speak English over Japanese. Now, why would Limited Run go to the trouble of making reproduction carts for these games? Probably because the licensing costs were dirt cheap. But I don’t care about no reproduction carts or original hardware, I just care about the games and their files being made widely available.
Earnest Evans Collection is slated for Switch, PS4, and PS5, with an estimated release date of June 2025, and hopefully it will be at least a sufficient way of playing these games on consoles.
…Okay, that’s all. NEXT!
Nintendo Switch Hits 150 Million Units Sold
(It Might Just Beat The PS2 At This Rate!)
Nintendo finished tallying up things for their big Q4 holiday bash and posted a bunch of new sales numbers. But the big one was showing that the Nintendo Switch finally broke past the 150 million unit threshold. This is significant because, one, that is an impressive number to us hamburger-brained humans, and two, this puts the Nintendo Switch even closer to being the best-selling console of all time. Just behind the Nintendo DS’s 154.02 million and the PS2’s ‘go fuck yourself.’
Yeah, Sony has been cagey about conveying how many PS2s were actually sold, when I know they were numbering them diligently. They were with PSPs at least. For a decade, people accepted the 155 million figure, but then Jim Ryan just flippantly added 5 million to that figure and said it was over that. This does not really matter, but I like to think that Sony is just eager to hold onto the top spot and not get beaten by Nintendo.
However, it is entirely possible that the Switch could close the gap in its final main year on the market. They were at 139.36 million units as of the end of 2023, so their current momentum could carry them forward. …Personally though, I think that is a bit too optimistic. The economy is going to be rough this year. People are going to trade in their old Switches for the upgraded Switch 2. The Switch really cannot undergo a price cut due to the COVID inflation bump that has affected every nation. Screens are screens. A 2015 chipset still costs about the same to produce in terms of nominal dollars at least. And while I foresee Nintendo bridging the gap between generations as they amass stock, putting out a lot of games for Switch and Switch 2, I do not see those bringing in new customers.
Would I like to be wrong? Yes. If only for symbolic purposes. Something to show that the console industry is growing, even if it really isn’t. PCs will just continue to grow and, as I have predicted before, dedicated console gaming will eventually just be Sony and Nintendo. That may be sad or concerning, but so long as people are buying and playing a wide variety of games— they aren’t— then I think the industry will be alright.
Onimusha 2: Samurai’s Destiny Remaster Announced
(Better Late Than Never, I Guess)
Hey! Remember how when Onimusha: Way of the Sword was announced at the Keighley’s and I went on a tangent about how strange it was that Capcom hadn’t re-whatever’d the rest of the series? Well, it was still bloody weird that they remastered the first Onimusha in 2018, let the series sit, and then announced a new game 6 years later. And now, with a new game on the horizon to release in 2026, they announced a remaster of Onimusha 2: Samurai’s Destiny (2002).
Which they announced by showing what appears to be an AI upscaled video of the game’s opening CG movie, along with a snippet of a flamboyant character named Gogadantess. Who I believe is a recurring antagonist throughout the title, though somebody watching this trailer, who knows little about the original game, would not know that.
I know I say this a lot when games are announced via trailers, but it is important to show the gameplay. Show off what the game looks and plays like, not just its vibes, especially when Onimusha is so particular in its genre.
…Also, again, I need to question the logic of releasing each game here individually, when I would view this series as a ‘package deal’ soft of affair. Maybe this is just the result of Capcom only having so many people who can remaster a game like this. Or maybe they avoided releasing a collection because they don’t want to pay Jean Reno royalties for his role in Onimusha 3: Demon Siege (2004). I don’t know if there was a royalty agreement with this game, but he’s an acclaimed actor, so I would be surprised if it was a flat rate.
Onimusha 2: Samurai’s Destiny will be released for PS4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC in 2025. …A platform list that really makes me think that this remaster has just been sitting on a shelf for 5 years, because how many games of this sort are skipping out on a PS5 or Xbox Series release? I mean, the game should play the same no matter what, but that hasn’t stopped most devs from shoving out a PS5 version. Probably because Sony just likes it when devs do that.
Progress Report 2025-02-09
Let’s see, what random thought can I end on… right. About a week ago, I started listening to this album, Lord Willin’ by Clipse, because I really like Team Teamwork’s Ocarina of Rhyme. Hell, I’ve liked it for 13 years, since I was some dumbass 17-year-old in high school, slummin’ it on an eMac. But I never checked out the original for… whatever reason. So I finally did, for one of these tracks, and the album itself is… good, but weirdly balanced.
When creating an album, you want to create a narrative, or pace things so that one track flows into the next, it builds up into something, and the quality is dispersed evenly. You do not want to start an album on the best track, and you want to wedge more experimental, non-single-worthy, stuff between the hits and songs that ought to be hits.
Lord WIllin’ first six tracks are great to fantastic. Bumpin’ beats, ill bars. They burrow into the brain and stay there. There’s some real energy and the whole thing gets me pumped and happy. The intro? Banger! Young Boy! Classic! Virginia! Hit-maker! Grindin’? DOPE. Just not dope enough to support two remixes on a 15 track album! Cot Damn and Ma, I Don’t Love Her? Great collab tracks that interject some extra flavor into a debut album, and showing the artist’s ability to work with others without getting overshadowed. That’s 24 minutes of greatness right there.
…But then the Fam-Lay Freestyle is more of a bridge track donated to the lead artist by a collaborator. It’s short, does not say a bunch, and would just be standard album fillers. I listen to rap albums as whole entities, so I’m used to this. And for the next two tracks, they just do not hit very hard. The backing beats are almost all worse than those seen in the first half. Just listening through it about six times, there is less hard-hitting substance for me to munch on. I think it gets better with the 10th track, Comedy Central, but something about the underlying beat does not mesh well with my head, and it of course ends in a homophobic skit, because 2002 machismo.
Let’s Talk About It, track 11, also has the problem of a harsh beat that I simply don’t like and find slightly grating, even when listening from the FLACs, but it is still an improvement. While the last two tracks are… good, capping off the album well and serving as an 8/10 album. I don’t think it’s one of the best rap albums of the 2000s, like Wikipedia’s sources, but it earned a spot in my rotation despite some… debut album and ordering jank. Because if you, I dunno, put Ego between Young Boy and Virginia, it would make for a more even ride. At least per my subjective ordering preferences for music. It was a weirdly big fixation of mine. Especially during my Queen phase, where I tried to turn each of my dumb compilation albums into a story.
Also, I’ve already decided that the mood album for this year is Sonic Jihad by Snake River Conspiracy. Also-Also, not unlike how Heads Are Gonna Roll by The Hippos is a lowkey ‘couples with possession powers’ album, Sonic Jihad is trans as fuck, without really trying. If I had any excess time, I could make a TSF Series directly based on both without really trying. Alas, time is illmatic. And at this rate, I ain’t never gonna get ’round to IllMalice. (Or is it IIIMalice?)
2025-02-02: I FINALLY, after over half a month, got back to editing the outline for Verde’s Doohickey 2.0 Act 3! I revised the outline for a large fourth of July chapter and added a gaiden section to another chapter, amounting to about 3,000 words of outlining. Also, spent the morning grabbing images for the Pokémon Pocket review going live on February 12. I would have done more, but my mental state has just been BAD, dude.
2025-02-03: Wrote 800 word preamble to the Rundown. Wrote 1,100 word Google Doc bit. And the 1,100 word El Earnest Anett bit. Did the 400 word Switch bit. Also redid some more parts of the July 4 outline for VD2.0, adding a 1,100 word gaiden at the end and redoing/replacing 500-ish words. So… today was a good day!
2025-02-04: Wrote the 350 word Onimusha 2 bit. Did some expansions and a new gaiden chapter for July 5 in VD2.0, which amounts to about 2,000 words of new writing.
2025-02-05: I installed a new CPU cooler into my PC and set up a power supply unit in case I undergo a power outage after experiencing a few since I moved in here. It’s overkill, and a bit unnecessary, as I have been using a surge protector since I was… 6. But I am also paranoid of the power grid getting wrecked by Chicagoland data centers and want to preserve my PC. It was a business expense! For July 6th in VD2.0, I realized I had to make up a whole storyline that I have been neglecting, so I was just writing ideas down and seeing where I could take it. Took some fine-tuning, and only parts were detailed, but that’s still 3,000 words of outlining done.
2025-02-06: Uuuuhhhh. I got distracted by PokéRogue after Rain started chattin’ about her one Pokémon run with Lapras. So I did a Lapras run… and polished off another one. God, I cannot keep doing this. But at least I quit the TCG Pocket heroine three days previous! So it’s okay if I eat a quart of weed! (How do drugs work again?) Then I edited the Rundown.
2025-02-07: Okay, made good progress with the outline, another 2,800 words, but when I got to the gaiden section, I realized I did not know to make ‘a bunch of characters try to restore a server after a virus attack’ into good drama. …Without being an isekai or introducing a new type of transformation, like body part swap, role swap, or age/race swap. Which would be too distracting here. It was also 1:00, and I do not come up with my best ideas at 1:00. Would have done more, but I spent a good while location scouting for a good tropical resort in Northeastern Mexico, and concluded that one did not exist. Fuck it, they’ll take a flight to Cancun to chase after the mastermind. Screw you, Tampico, you untropical POS!
2025-02-08: Shit. I encountered one of my rare roadblocks with deciding how to progress with a storyline. I needed to figure out a good romantic pursuit for a character that would be hot, but I was struggling to think of a good dynamic for hours. Worked on 7,000 words of the outline, but it was very creatively draining work. Especially after I realized that I was taking the wrong direction with the creative swap I was trying to bash out yesterday. I technically already wrote like 2,500 of this, but I had to scrap and rewrite like 2,500 words of new stuff. Just not in a good mental space today for whatever reason. Also, I kept finding horny ideas and just powering through them, so it felt like I was edging for a lot of the day. And edging sucks. I don’t need no pussy boners while I’m trying to map out erotic funsies. But hey, July 8th has been fully mapped. Still need to come up with a July 3rd gaiden extension though. Will decide based on spreadsheet and who is underserved in the screen time community.