First one I’m thinking of is Summon Night Swordcraft Story 3, I actually own a copy of this I picked up used when I visited Japan as part of a tour group when I was in high school. Loved the first two games, been waiting for that translation patch that’s been in development hell for forever, maybe I should just try to play it myself.

Second one, Boktai 3. First two games are so near and dear to my childhood, when the third game didn’t get localized I convinced my parents to sign me up for Japanese classes on the weekend just because I wanted to play it on original hardware with the Solar Sensor. Ended up dropping it because it was hard and I had too much trouble keeping up with my actual schoolwork, but now that I’m trying again as an adult maybe I could revisit the childhood holy grail.

Or maybe a Tales game, any of the ones that still aren’t translated yet.

But I’m also thinking about how when I tried to skim through Box, the pixel font was kind of a struggle for me. Might be better to play something newer, ideally something with Furigana. Though the appeal for me is to play games that don’t have localizations, and almost every modern game does now.

As for the manga, so far I have finished Yotsubato, RuriDragon, and Look Back. Enjoyed them all, but I needed a lot of help from those Wanikani vocab lists. Got a bookmark partway through Shirokuma Cafe, but haven’t been feeling this one as much. And since I started with the ones LearnNatively ranked as easiest, I fear the rest are getting harder from here…

But would @[email protected]’s statement also apply to go?

Aiming to pass the JLPT N3 in December. I know N3 is a pretty big jump up from N4, and I’ve kinda been slacking on my studies - still keeping up with SRS, but I know SRS alone isn’t really learning. Life stuff has just kept me too busy to make time for that big pile of manga. But I’m sure if I start picking up the pace, I can get there by December. I just have to procrastinate less and immerse more.

Secondary goal, maybe try to finish a JRPG. I sorta skimmed through Puyo Puyo Box last year, but I really only skimmed, and I’d like to actually try to dig into something more story-driven. That’s going to be a harder challenge, may or may not be one I’ll be ready for by the end of this year, but we’ll see where I’m at. There’s a few possible candidates I have in mind to try, pick one out, start on it and see if it feels doable.

Maybe in just one specific genre, but other kinds of competitive games do exist. It’s worth noting that fighting games have never had even a single cheating scandal.

I think that’s a rather shallow way of looking at. Would you describe something like chess as ‘lazy’ then?

A good competitive game has to put a lot of thought and care into its design to make it so that two players trying to make each other miserable actually ends up coming out the other end as a fun experience.

Does it have to be exclusively in a foreign language, or does it still count if a dub exists as long as that’s not the original? If I can count it, A Silent Voice/Koe no Katachi (2016).

• Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End - I tell people that if you only watch one anime, make it this one. An absolute masterpiece in every way, with a story and characters that I think can hook anyone. Season 2 is about to begin soon.
• Bocchi the Rock! - If you want to see animators really having fun with their medium, the visual humor is what elevates this show above and beyond. Cutaway gags involve 3D models, claymation, paper cutouts, puppets, and even live action.
• CITY: The Animation - Like Bocchi, this is animation for animation’s sake, just go look at the trailer for this one. The only thing I like more than Keiichi Arawi’s artwork is the production values putting it into motion.
• Apocalypse Hotel - My anime of the year for 2025. This is one of those shows where if I can convince you to look nothing up and go in blind, you’ll have a blast with its twists and turns. One season, 12 episodes, short and sweet and delightful.
• Takopi’s Original Sin - I can’t recommend this one to just anyone, it is a horrifically dark gut punch covered in content warnings. But if you can handle its subject matter, it is the best kind of gut punch, and it’s short. What really sells it is that it never crosses the line into just edginess for edge’s sake, which allows it to hit harder because of how real and human the suffering feels.
• Spy x Family - If you don’t want to watch something as dark as Takopi, or if you did watch Takopi and you need a palate cleanser afterwards, here’s a cute happy comedy about two bozos trying to be good parents to their adopted daughter. It is impossible to watch this show without grinning from ear to ear the whole time.

I’d argue that if a game doesn’t have anything to nitpick at, it probably wasn’t doing anything bold enough for me to truly fall in love with either.

There was [email protected], but I was the only one posting there and it looks like the instance died at some point.

Have you seen what modern arcade games are like? In order to set themselves apart from consumer hardware you can get at home, modern games have been leaning heavily into unique hardware gimmicks (of course this has always been a thing to an extent ever since Beatmania and DDR, but it’s much much much much more of a thing now since these are effectively the only kinds of games that get released in arcades anymore). Which does mean specialized cabinets are more expensive now, and maintenance is a whole can of worms - Wacca at my local Round 1 has had display issues for over a year and I’ve just assumed it’s never getting fixed because Marvelous is no longer servicing parts for it.

Look up how much a Maimai or Chunithm cabinet costs. We’ve come a long way from the JAMMA era when operators could get new games on the cheap by reusing an old cabinet and just swapping out the PCB.

On top of that, some modern games even require revenue sharing agreements where the operator has to give the publisher a cut of every credit played, which cuts into profit margins even further. I think they literally can’t just charge a quarter for some of these games.

The only reason I’m here on Fedi is because Miiverse is gone.

Card-based credits allow the arcade operator to offer finer-grained pricing options than tokens that can only be spent in integer amounts. Whether that’s a pro or a con is debatable, they can put less popular games on ‘sale’ to attract players to try them out, or they can gouge you on the hottest new title. It’s also very much a way of obfuscating prices so you don’t even realize how much you’re spending. And are you really getting the best deal by loading your card with the maximum amount of credits at once so they give you a bonus, or is that just how they get you?

In the grand scheme of things though, I’m a lot less bothered by it than I am by the way modern arcades are mostly just gambling for kids now. At least most arcades still keep a few rhythm games in the back, actually I do love that arcade rhythm games are going through a sort of modern renaissance right now, but that’s kinda just the only thing still worth going to an arcade for anymore.

I only watched three new shows this year but loved all of them. Got a lot more to catch up on (especially Spy x Family S3 and Apothecary Diaries S2).

• CITY: The Animation - The only thing I like more than Keiichi Arawi’s artwork is the production values putting it into motion. TBH though, I thought the writing was decent but mostly just carried by the artwork. And I’m fine with that, the animation carried hard.
• Takopi’s Original Sin - Binged it and had to go lie down. What really made this show so compelling was having it be told through the eyes of an alien that doesn’t realize what’s wrong, leaving the viewer to scream “Takopi no, stop, you’re not helping, Takopi please stop!” Is it bad though that I kinda wanted the ending to twist the knife a little more?
• Apocalypse Hotel - I want to say that it’s hard to choose a favorite this year because both CITY and Takopi were fantastic, but on further reflection it absolutely has to go to Apocalypse Hotel. What an incredible ride this was from start to finish. If you somehow have missed this one, I urge you to look nothing up and go in blind.

I enjoy overanalyzing and theorizing about media as much as the next guy, but this isn’t actually part of the text. You as the player are expected to regularly change up your party, why couldn’t Green have also just decided to swap Raticate out for any number of reasons?

FightCade for netplay on all the platforms it supports. Standalone Dolphin for Gamecube/Wii. Sometimes Nintendo Switch Online for games officially available there. For everything else, Retroarch.

That’s nothing more than headcanon. I don’t think you can compare that to the actual text of Z-A here.

I had a page-by-page vocab list from Wanikani, but the goal is to use as little assistance as possible, only check words I don’t know. If I read a translation side-by-side, I’m really just reading the translation rather than understanding the original Japanese.

So far it’s mostly been slice-of-life, but recent chapters seem to be hinting that it’s meant to build up to a bigger conflict.

This was the second manga (after obligatory Yotsubato) I read in Japanese as I started learning, some of the slang was a bit tricky but it was a fun read. Liked it enough that I then went back to read it in English again. So this one’s got a solid place in my heart, very excited to see this adaptation.

I’ve seen a small handful of series that have been officially uploaded to Youtube, check ItsAnimeJP. Not a lot, mostly older stuff and mostly subbed.