My Life In Gaming – RetroUSB's AVS NES

hpknight – Saturday

pixiv is basically the Japanese DeviantArt, full of talented artists I’d never have heard of otherwise. I picked up Udon’s Pixiv Almanac last year at PAX East and I craved more. I’m now subscribed to pixiv Top Weekly – Top 20 which gives a good balance of quality and quantity. Other pixiv feeds are available at PixivRss. If people like this post, I may do some more like this in the future.

You can click each image below to visit its posting on pixiv. If you register an account there, you can download the full resolution image. Also, this is a good time to remind you that I write mouseover text for almost every image on this blog, which you can see whether you’re on my site or reading my RSS feed.

(This post and the four before it were all one post over on my old blog. Tumblr doesn’t support mouseover text, so I’ve copied those over as plain text for each image’s post.)

That sky is pretty! I use this as the wallpaper for my Grub menu to choose which OS to boot into. I think I was actually linked to this one by a Tumblr blog I followed, but I forget which one. Sorry.

UPDATE: Added Google Translate-based guesses for all titles and usernames to bring this more in line with my other pixiv posts

Source: 「土曜日」/「嗨P」のイラスト [pixiv]

Yuumei – Glass Instruments

Hi, blog! It’s been a couple months! I almost forgot how to do these posts. Yuumei, designer of the original Cat Ear headphones, painted some musical instruments made of glass. I wonder how they would sound. Crystal flutes exist, and I imagine string instruments would sound pretty normal too. When hitting a drum with water in it, the air and the water would make two different sounds at the same time. Then there’s the fish tank piano, which would take physical strength to play but make super deep, eerie tones. Underwater performances are possible!

Source: Yuumei via Pixiv several years ago

My glass instruments series :) I’ve been meaning to add more instruments in the future but it’s hard to find time between all the projects. They are all available as prints, wallscrolls, post cards and tote bags at https://www.yuumeiart.com/shop/

THPS 1+2 Donut Land

For the past two months, I’ve put an unhealthy amount of time on my PS4 building my Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 park, Donut Land. It’s a city with the size of a normal THPS2 level, filled to the brim with ramps, combos, tunnels, transfers, and giant gaps. It’s in the community’s hands now, so I’m curious to see what lines and remixes they come up with.

Source: myself, music from Savaged Regime’s Xeno Crisis soundtrack

Canvas for Pebble

UPDATE: I made another Canvas screen called Wallpaper Watchface. Go get that one instead. It’s better.

Wearable devices are the next big thing in tech. I’ve jumped on the bandwagon with a Pebble, and I want to develop for it. On Android, Canvas for Pebble lets you quickly make watchfaces that nicely display the time, date, weather, and your phone’s unread message and missed call counts. I took a few hours and made a watchface I like that displays seconds, and you can have it too.

If you want to try on the Dr. Mo Day 1 watchface, you’ll need a Pebble running  firmware 2.0 beta and Canvas for Pebble 2.0 beta. These should still work when Pebble 2.0 and Canvas for Pebble 2.0 are released. Once that’s installed, visit this post on your phone and click the version you want below.

Dr. Mo Day 1 Imperial Dr. Mo Day 1 Metric

Ever notice how almost every watch ad has the time set to 10:10? Analog watches look better that way, but I'm not so sure about digital watches. It's a lot harder to fake the time on a cell phone.

Source: My blog’s first ever selfie, Numberphile, and Canvas for Pebble

Hitstun and DALL·E 2 – Me Playing Chess in No Game No Life

I tried to make a model of myself based on the closest celebrity lookalike I know, Ashton Kutcher, and adjusting it so it looks kinda like me in non-realistic styles. Dalle2Anime on Twitter gave me great tips for key words and including an artist name. I’ve had previous success in 2-step uncropping to make good-looking faces and I went with that approach again.

I originally wanted my character floating in the air because it’s me and I think Floating Is Fun, DALL·E 2 kept ignoring parts of my prompts, and it would always crop part of the character’s head out of the top of the image. After a lot of trial and error that cost too much money, I came to grips with DALL·E 2’s limitations on details. I settled for a chess game which makes sense in No Game No Life context anyway.

Here’s an earlier attempt in Tales of Vesperia style.

Source: DALL·E 2 using initial prompt and uncrop prompt

Manabu Namiki – Stab and Stomp!

30-Day Video Game Music Challenge (Super Hard Mode) Day 15: Boss battle music From Battle Garegga (Saturn, 1998)

If the boss kills you, just say you took the death on purpose to manage your rank.

If this version is too “arcade” to count as Saturn music, use Christmas NiGHTS’s boss music instead.

Source: YouTube, challenge by OverClocked ReMix I think?, via NintendoCapriSun

Hitoshi Sakimoto – Waltz of Meditation Part 2

30-Day Video Game Music Challenge (Super Hard Mode) Day 17: Music you never get tired of From Magical Chase (TurboGrafx-16, 1991)

Hitoshi Sakimoto and Masaharu Iwata bring huge symphonic sound everywhere they go. The Holy Grail of TurboGrafx-16 collecting hasn’t been re-released anywhere for 20 years.

Source: YouTube, challenge by OverClocked ReMix I think?, via NintendoCapriSun

ToriNaru – ReiMari-Santa

The tree is up, the lights are on, the presents are wrapped, and it’s Christmas Day. I might even get to take a nap for a few hours before things get started. pixiv’s Christmas tag is used way more than I expected, even on pixiv Spotlight. Happy holidays, everyone!

OK, so I doubt many people here Stateside are getting Touhou stuff for Christmas. There's actually a separate Touhou Christmas tag which itself has 2,318 results.

Source: http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=47611488 (「れいまりさんた」/「鳥成」のイラスト [pixiv]) via filtering the Christmas tag by landscape

Xinon – Origin

I just got on the train headed for another PAX East! 70,000 gamers get together in Boston every year to play games, and you can find competition in any game there is. Last year, I took second place in the tournaments for Tetris DS and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2, and I’ve been training to win them both this time around. I’ll be updating Twitter just like last year.

Anyway, enjoy some high-energy Game Boy chiptunes courtesy of Xinon. This album has gotten me through some long, tiring weekends.

Source: https://xinon.bandcamp.com/album/origin via a Spotibot playlist based on my Last.fm recommendations

sh/f Super Fireball Battle

Now that I’ve got all my WordPress posts on Tumblr, what should I do with it? How about I introduce a tool-assisted video Sonic Hurricane debuted at Evo2k10? Evenly matched projectiles and beams clash like it’s Dragon Ball Z. This video got me into Shinichi Osawa’s album The One and the soundtrack to DoDonPachi Resurrection Black Label.

Source: Sonic Hurricane via RSS feed nearly eight years ago