A paste

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 *Long Awaited Pastebin
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Well, maybe not long awaited for *you* - but I've had a lot of stuff on my mind so I'm finally typing it all out.

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// Nintendo Switch

First, the big news of the week is most certainly the Nintendo Switch. It looks cool, for sure, but so far there's nothing about it that makes it a must for me. At least not on day one. I almost certainly will eventually get one, but it's too early for me to get on the *OMG I NEED IT NOW GIV MOAR TAKE MONEY PRE-ORDER WHERE PLS* hype train.

I don't care about the portability thing. That's cool, I guess, but ultimately 99.9% of my game play is at home. Almost all of my 3DS play is just in my bed as I'm about ot go to sleep. I love the Wii U gamepad because it lets me play while my wife is watching something else on TV - and I like that Switch will keep that feature - but again, that's still at home.

The two big things that excite me about it: New 3D Mario and Square Enix partnership. If FFXV and the FF7 remake are able to make their way to Switch, then I won't need to get a PS4 at all. And that would be great.
out.

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// Offline Games

Started Kingdom Hearts 2 with the kids. Original plan was to take a short break then start SMG2 or Banjo-Kazooie with them, but Disneyland was so great that I couldn't wait to start Kh2. So far so good - I really like how they kept Seifer, Fujin, and Raijin's personalities the same from FF8 - but why is Vivi hanging out with them?

LOVING Ori and the Blind Forest. Thanks to OverlordBossk for giving it to me. Almost done, and it makes me excited to move on to some other Steam games I have (Freedom Planet, Cave Story, Castle of Illusion).

Bravely Second is fun, but weird. They've improved a lot from Default, but the story and characters are pretty silly. It's fun, but not as compelling as the first. I'm in Chapter 3.

Wind Waker HD I'd like to find time to play before AGDQ, but it doesn't seem likely. I also need to make time for FF13-2 soon.

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// Blind Playthroughs

Finished Banjo-Tooie. Loved it. Lots of fun, lots of laughs. Special shoutouts to aweglib, Twig, and Zera for their support and regular contributions to this stream. Definitely going to have a severe case of #TooieWithdrawals.

Three options on this front next:

-Metroid - try to resume this. I was pretty stuck (err... bad) and didn't enjoy it a ton. But I really hate leaving things unfinished. Might be worth another try. But it's a little complicated to set up my Wii U for streaming right now, so idk if I want to do this right now. Maybe eventually.

-Zelda 2 - Gonna need to do it sometime. Don't know if I'm quite feeling it at the moment.

-Super Castlevania IV - Strongly considering this - maybe even starting it on Halloween night. I've seen a *lot* of people playing/running it lately. I loved SotN, and this one is usually ranked right up there with it.

Or I may just let blind plays take a break for a bit. I've got a lot I want to do with...

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// Speedruns

-DKC2 tournament is just around the corner. I'm still pretty rusty and have only completed a couple runs since trying to come back. I'd like to be able to be consistently in the 42-43 timeframe for the tournament, as that should be enough to help me win a couple rounds and at least be competitve later. Nam and I are also submitting races to a couple marathons coming up, so it would be nice to beat him.

-I'd also really like a 41. Why? I'm capable of it. I don't like the idea of stopping when I know I could still play better. But I'm just not sure if I really feel like putting in the work to practice right now. Doing ILs doesn't sound that fun to me. I suppose it would be worth it, but I'm just not terribly excited about it right now.

-What I AM really excited about is the possibility of learning Banjo-Kazooie. I loved Banjo-Tooie, and it really got me in the mood to play its predecessor again. The 100% speedrun seems like something I could learn and would have a ton of fun doing. Why not Tooie? Well, I liked Kazooie a bit more, and it's a much, much shorter game. Honestly, I'm tempted to just completely forget about DKC2 entirely and work on learning this.

-Another thing I've considered is putting in more work and going for the 306% World Record after all - maybe in January/February. I'm likely to get some viewers from the commentary during the DKC Relay Race at AGDQ, and they'd probably want to watch me play Donkey. This is something that I'd be capable of - but again, not sure if I want to put in the work. It'd be cool to have a WR in something that's actually challenging (even though v0oid could take it any time he chooses) - but again, that's a lot of work and I wouldn't be able to learn Banjo as soon.

-Everything else I've considered - SMB, SMB3, Shovel Knight, Diablo II... well, all of that is probably out the window. I'm still really interested in the NES Mega Man games - but it might just stay as a Mega Man week thing when the mood strikes. I'd also love to do a full Earthbound speedrun sometime next year - who knows.