#PastebinMonday 01/04/2021 2020 in Review Edition

Hey guys, how’s it goin?

Holy hell, that was a year we just had. Several things happened to me over the course of that year. Let's go over them in detail.

The year started on the heels of a successful Pokemon Puzzle Challenge tournament, looking forward to the Pokemon Puzzle League 20th anniversary tournament later in the year, and with me wanting to prepare for that tournament. Of course, that could only mean a grind of... Nintendo Puzzle Collection! Yeah, if I dug into the PPL well that soon, I would have been tired of it by the time the tournament started. Thus, I decided to work on a similar game for a while. That was a FUn three months. “FUn” in the sense that, by the end, I wanted to bang my brains out and ram my head against a brick wall with how much I was struggling with V-Hard. I don't recommend going for WR in that game if you value your sanity.

Fortunately, I had another game to take the edge off during that time: Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL World Duel Carnival. What a refreshing experience to have a story-driven Yu-Gi-Oh! game where you don't have to grind for cards to play with the best cards. What a concept! It was also nice to fiddle around with 3DS streaming a bit more. There was a plan to have a Yu-Gi-Oh! speedrun marathon last year. (Plans? In 2020? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA) If those plans come back around, I'll definitely pick this back up.

At the beginning of April, I lost my job as a side effect of reduced activity due to the pandemic. At first, I was incredibly bummed out that I no longer had job security. Then I got to thinking about what it really meant and I was like, 'Heyyy, how about this? You don't have to work. You get a RAISE (which I hadn't had in three years). You don't have to go anywhere. AND you get more time to do the things you love? Sign me up!' And I had just the game to go back to with all of the spare time I suddenly received:

Yu-Gi-Oh! The Falsebound Kingdom.

I do love me my Yu-Gi-Oh! and I do love me my RPGs. I hadn't touched the game since 2014 and a new person had come around with a new tactic of buying equip items earlier in Yugi's story. I decided to take that strategy to its next logical step: using the Konami code to get more money and get all of the best items money can buy. Honestly, that was the most fun I had with a speedgame in a long time. Having fun with a speedrun? Imagine if you will...
I left that game wanting to look at Kaiba's story and experimenting with Black Pendants in Yugi's. I never got that time after getting a new job at the end of August. This is on the to-do list.

Once I started getting into a regular flow again, I had to handle the annual Pokemon Puzzle League tournament in a way where it didn't crash and burn. I think I succeeded with that, all the while adding new bells and whistles to make the viewing experience just a little more entertaining. We saw record views on the channel videos and record live viewership on the matches. Can't wait to do it again this year. I couldn't win the tournament this time around, but honestly, I've stopped caring about winning. I just want to make the broadcasts look nice. The preparation for the Tetris Attack tournament is going similarly well. I think you'll like a lot about what you see when that tournament comes around.

After that, I've been laying low since while I figure out where streaming fits in my life. I also wanted to find my own identity within my streams and not just borrow things that belong to a commercial IP. I have yet to be hit with any sort of DMCA strike, but I don't feel like taking any more chances. Things will look a little different this time around and I hope to start showing that off sometime this month.

(Man, it is really hard to get anything done on a PC with just phone data.)

That’s my life story for the week. Until next time, everyone, thanks for reading!

--Cards