#PastebinMonday 07/30/2018

Tetris Attack practice is in full swing at the moment with the tournament coming up. To think, at one point, I was merely happy with the occasional sub-9 V-Hard run. Nowadays, I want that to be the norm, mostly because I feel like I’m gonna need it to win the tournament. I had a day last week where sub-9 was my average, but my current average since I started preparing is at 9:11. I will continue to track this at least until the start of the tournament so stay tuned to these updates if you are curious about where the time ends up.

The people behind Panel Attack, the premier way to play Tetris Attack online, will be having a big tournament for it this weekend for actual CASH PRIZES! It’s $35 for 1st, $15 for 2nd, $10 for 1st in the “amateur” bracket, and a $10 raffle among all participants! It will be the first tournament that I participate in in a long time. Personally, the best I can hope for is 2nd if Yoschimidtsu enters. My expertise is in speedruns where the game runs at speed level 6. I have very little experience in the tournament standard levels 8 and 10. I will be spending my regularly scheduled Panel de Pon routing time this week preparing for that.

I have also come to the realization that I may need to do something different with the Winnie the Pooh’s Home Run Derby sub incentive. I have promised another stream of that game every time the channel’s peak subscriber count goes up by 5 within a calendar week. That said, even though I peaked at 20 viewers for a while on Saturday, I doubt that watching me fail at Sata—er, Christopher Robin, for six hours straight is all that fun. Honestly, it stopped being fun for me to play, too. I will probably end up shifting the focus of those streams to just beating my current Tigger RTA record of 18:40. The “reward” for beating the time would be the opportunity to beat Christopher Robin again. I am open to discussion on a different game for the incentive.

In other speedrun news, I was really amused this weekend when I saw someone take on Pokemon Puzzle Challenge for the 12 Hour Challenge not long after I stopped playing it. Even for someone that’s played the game casually, I would hardly recommend trying to learn it in 12 hours. It’s not that bad at the lower levels, but your chaining ability is tested so hard that you could end up wasting a lot of time if you are overmatched. I did see, however, that with decent cursor speed and a semblance of a plan, you could beat Easy mode in less than 5 minutes after a few hours. I really do need to make some sort of tutorial.

In other gaming news, I am about 75% through Radiant Historia Perfect Chronology. Friendly mode might be a little TOO friendly. My main character is 20 levels higher now than he was at the end of my playthrough in the original. Getting immediate experience for preemptive strikes is a bit busted. Enemies, in general, were also probably neutered too much. For instance, one spider boss that can one-shot anyone in your party and can only be reasonably defeated through poison in the original can barely kill the squishy wizard in two turns, three if you have done any grinding. Friendly mode is really comfy, though. I should look up at some point if there’s any way to skip cutscenes on new files if you have other files that have seen them. Maybe you need a completed file. I don’t know. Somehow, I feel some duty to speedrun this version. As if I need to put ANOTHER potential game on my list…

In personal news, I'm at a weird place with work. I am somewhere where I feel important & needed and am able to live as comfortably as I reasonably can, but I lose a few IQ points on a daily basis being exposed to the mistakes my coworkers make. I generally have to clean up those mistakes in order to do my job, but it can get me depressed after a while. I nearly had a mental breakdown on Friday. I can’t see myself working anywhere else, though, mostly because I can’t see myself being able to get an interview for another job that pays near the same. This is just something I will have to deal with.

That's my life story for the week. Maybe I can yell at Forky to open up the Tetris Attack tournament signups so I can give deets on that later. Oh well. Until next time, everyone, thanks for reading!

--Cards