onmode-ky

Happy New Year! Heh, no TheC64 for me. I do have the Commodore 64 DTV from Mammoth Toys (though I don't recall which of the DTV's two game sets it has), picked up from a KB Toys for $10 in 2005, and that'll do for me. Thanks for the details on the Analogue Pocket, Atariboy. I'll be really impressed if it someday becomes able to play PSP UMD games. As I think I've mentioned before, I'm a big, big Lego fan; I believe they're the greatest toy ever created. Certainly, I haven't bought any in a great many years, but that's not because I don't want to. If you need to know what to do with them once you've built them, do what I did: pick them up and tell a story with them like a puppet show (your favorite!), complete with the destruction and reconstruction of the space stati--oh, I built my own one of those, but anyway, Lego are a lot of fun for storyboarding and previs applications. As for why the Friends don't have legs, maybe that's social commentary on girls being constrained by lack of mobility. Or a reaction to those old "She kicks high" Xbox commercials. ;P My Asia- and Japan-region PSN accounts got their first funding transactions ever in the last few days. For the former, I used Play-Asia.com, but for the latter, Play-Asia's ridiculous 22-26% markup on Japanese PSN cards (their markup was only 8-9% on the Asia-region card) was a big turnoff, and I tried making use of my 20-year-old Amazon.co.jp account. That got hung up on region blocking, and long story short, I ended up just using PayPal to reimburse a friend in Japan for a Japanese PSN card code. The funding of my Asia-region account made for only the second entry in the account's transaction history; the first entry was from over 10 years prior, when I got a free theme in mid-2011, shortly after PSN came back from the breach (no idea why no other free themes ended up with entries in the transaction history). The funding of my Japan-region account became its transaction history's first entry ever. Not sure why that is, given that I've definitely redeemed DLC voucher codes that came with some of my Japanese PSP games, since 2013. Come to think of it, I think I redeemed a PSP theme voucher code with my Asia-region copy of Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness back in 2008, too. As is my wont, I bought some anime during holiday sales, but the only item that's been delivered so far is my copy of Part 2 of the Girls und Panzer das Finale 6-part theatrical series (three produced so far, one every two years since 2017, so three to go; in the US, we only got Parts 1 and 2 released on Blu-ray just in the last four months). My Part 1 is somewhere in the postal system, along with some of the other stuff I ordered, and yet more remains to be shipped. Another anime item was delivered just yesterday, BUT it isn't something I ordered recently. In fact, it was pretty perplexing, because I couldn't think of why in the world I was receiving a package from Tokyo Otaku Mode, sent by EMS express mail from Japan. Never bought anything from them before, certainly not a CD-R, as the EMS label said. First thought, of course: mail bomb?! :P However, it really seemed legitimately sent from Tokyo Otaku Mode (sender signature's name came up in Google search as an employee). I wondered if maybe I might not be the only person receiving something like this out of the blue, so I ran a Twitter search for "tokyo otaku mode package," and whaddaya know, it seems the package contains the Bean Bandit Blu-ray I helped Kickstart in mid-2018: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/beanbandit/kenichi-sonodas-bean-bandit-new-anime-project . My e-mail has no notification that they were already shipping, but according to the EMS tracking data, my package was shipped the morning of December 30th (Japan time). First of all, that's some fast EMS, and second, maybe they haven't gotten around to announcing the shipment kickoff yet . . . or they're really just not going to. It appears from Twitter searching that backers in Japan received their copies starting from December 23rd. Anyway, it's been a long time coming, and I'm glad it's finally here. Maybe I'll actually watch it soon (it's supposed to be very short). onmode-ky

Just popping in quickly to wish you guys a Merry Christmas. I hope your Analogue Pocket preorder succeeded, Atariboy. Not that I've looked into what that is. ;) onmode-ky

Crap, more than two months since my last appearance here. I'm actually getting worse at setting aside time to pop in. :( Anyway, no, I didn't really get anything during Black Friday/Cyber Monday, just my annual purchase of another year of antivirus subscription. However, I did buy a few PSV games in the NA PS Store, making use of the last bit of PayPal (and credit cards) direct funding capability in the PS3 and PSV Stores, back at the end of October. Nothing really dramatic, just Code Mystics' dreamwalker, Fordesoft's Emerald Shores, a pair of $1 visual novels published by Sometimes You, the pair of scrolling shooters by Visco Corporation published in Vasara Collection by QUByte Interactive, and Ray Gigant, a JRPG developed by Experience. All of them are sitting in my PS3 hard drive, waiting for transfer because I'm currently wrapping up my tryout of inviZimals: The Lost Tribes (a PSP game, but a good fit for the PSV because of its built-in camera); I intend to remove that game before putting the new stuff on the PSV. Next up for me in the way of downloadable games, I think I should take advantage of a PayPal promo and put some funds in my other-region PSN wallets, via PSN cards. Is Play-Asia.com the way to go for these? They don't have great exchange rates, but at least they're trustworthy, familiar, and have PSN cards for the countries I need. Specifically, I'm thinking of getting at least one thing from the Asia region (an Asia-exclusive single-screen shooter Mini, also one of the final Minis, Phase Shift: Threats Beyond the Network) and five PS1 Classics from the Japan region (Galaxian 3, Starblade Alpha, Einhänder, Thunder Force V: Perfect System, and Cotton 100%. However, Phase Shift still leaves a ton of PSN wallet funds behind, since it's barely over 20% of the lowest denomination of PSN card I can get, meaning that whatever else I decide to get, something needs to come from Asia rather than Japan, or else I'm wasting a bunch of money for just Phase Shift. I've been thinking of the remake of Star Soldier from early in the PSP's life (early when it was a UMD release, I mean, said UMDs now being much pricier than I'd like to pay), but the Asia PS Store's listing of that costs significantly higher than the Japan PS Store's, and unlike the Japan listing is not playable on PSVs (not a dealbreaker, what with account switching being a big pain on the PSV anyway, but it certainly doesn't help). Speaking of different hardware, I'm also wondering whether I ought to snag extra PSPs, one for each other-region account, since the days of being able to deactivate/activate a PSP on a different PSN account may be numbered. But I digress. What I am more concerned with at the moment is determining how much I ought to fund the Japanese PS Store wallet; i.e., what other games should I consider getting? Serious caveat, though: not a whole lot of space left on my PS3 hard drive, so no multi-GB games will be considered. And, while I've thought about the Namco Museum series, they're surprisingly pricey--which they were not when they still existed in the North American PS Store, costing only the standard price there. Generally speaking, I'm looking for games that are just plain not in the NA PS Store, but I did briefly consider the Dissidia duodecim prologus: Final Fantasy paid demo that has had an accidental price of $15 in the NA Store for years (was $3 at release, and is still a comparable price in other PS Stores, but in NA, when a Square Enix sale ended in May 2016 and games were supposed to be going back to their normal prices, prologus somehow got boosted to the price of a full game). However, that would have been fairly pointless, considering I don't have and don't plan to get duodecim itself. Some other PS1 Game Archives titles that caught my eye: RayCrisis, Lunar 2: Eternal Blue (of course, I'm not sure my Japanese is good enough to tackle an RPG with it), Philosoma, Advanced V.G. 2. Anything else I should ponder, on top of the ~3000 yen of those first five titles I mentioned? Man, that's a pleasing phrase, "massive pay raise." Obviously that increase in income is meant for you to buy a whole lot of puppets and puppet TV series on home media. And Duel Maids. onmode-ky P.S. While browsing the Japanese PS Store earlier today, I noticed that, seemingly in the time between 5 days ago, when I last checked that Store , and today, Rockman X8 has been removed from the PS2 Game Archives lineup.

After I finished my replaying of BRS with alternate costumes equipped, I tried out one of my few 2021 game purchases, Generation of Chaos: Pandora's Reflection (shortly before the PSP's PS Store closed for real, I bought Pandora's Reflection and inviZimals: The Lost Tribes as my final on-the-handheld-itself purchases). I took a loooong time to play less than 2 hours of saved game time (a bunch of game time was discarded, spent searching for hidden event points) to reach the end of Chapter 1. It's been pretty fun, kind of like a mini RTS, but even though it looks like a major game mechanic, summons, only got introduced in Chapter 1's final stage, I'm putting the game aside now to go to some other titles. Probably some more Breath of Fire III and Hyperdimension Neptunia U. After BRS, I also played around with The Lost Tribes, using the PSV and its built-in camera in place of pulling my PSP camera (which came with my purchase of the original inviZimals in 2010) out of mothballs. Again, I didn't get far in the game's actual campaign, but I still had fun with the innovative AR interactivity. Though it didn't catch on in the US, the inviZimals series really was a standout expansion of the PSP's capabilities. onmode-ky P.S. If I remember right, one of the several PSN avatars that come from Pandora's Reflection's character portraits is of a frog character. Well, now that I've played some of the game, I can say that his presence as a PSN avatar is very, very odd, because he dies at his debut in the game. Okay, I don't know--maybe he somehow comes back to life later, but where I am in the game, he's *ahem* croaked by suicide.

Yet another month-plus gone by without a post from me. :( I'm terribly sorry. But anyway, at the time of this post, I am still alive (not terribly sorry about that). I asked about the TG16/PCE/CGfx Mini earlier not so much to ask about internals or contents but because the price of the PC Engine Mini at Amazon Japan was/is currently well below MSRP--and these are ones sold from/shipped by Amazon Japan itself, not some random Marketplace seller, so they're definitely not bootlegs or scams. In addition, the "well below MSRP" even applies after the international express shipping (DHL) charge, which was 2380 yen (at current exchange rates, under US$22). If you bought one from Amazon Japan, shipped by itself, right now, I think a PC Engine Mini would come to somewhere between $90 and $95, slightly less than the system's 10,500-yen MSRP. So, if you've been thinking about getting a PC Engine Mini, now seems like a pretty good time. At American and European Amazons, I only know (thanks to our resident Italian PSPMinis member, AxelMill) of Amazon Italy still carrying original stock at a near-original price, in this case 110 euros, slightly above the 100-euro MSRP--but this is before shipping cost and is well above the Amazon Japan price. Anyway, I bought a PC Engine Mini a few weeks ago from Amazon Japan, and thanks to amortization of the shipping charge across a two-item order, the amount I paid for the Mini came out to just over $82, a few bucks less than I paid for my SNES Classic Edition back in 2017. Not bad at all for a system with way more games than Nintendo's second plug-n-play. The other item in the order was Vol. 01 Special Edition of Macross Delta, the 2016 Macross TV series; I've never seen it before despite being a Macross fan, and I know it's unlikely to get licensed for North America anytime soon, given that neither of the two Macross TV series before it (1994's Macross 7 and 2008's Macross Frontier) have ever come west. Similarly, I got a few Blu-rays of Macross Frontier back about a decade ago, among my first Blu-rays ever, taking advantage of Japan's Blu-ray region being the same as the US's. But going back to the PC Engine Mini, I have predictably not yet opened mine yet--which indeed also means I don't know for sure if I have a compatible USB power adapter yet. I'm still not really back when it comes to plug-n-play research, but I did discover that in mid-August, an Amiga plug-n-play was announced, the TheA500 Mini (which the maker, Retro Games Ltd. of THEC64 fame, prefers to write as "THEA500 Mini"), for intended release early next year. It's planned to come with 25 games built in (at least some of which appeared in the Minis program, namely Pinball Dreams and Speedball 2 of the titles announced so far), plus the ability to add more. Some of you may recall that I've used my mother's Apple account to play some iOS games before, since she had an iDevice long before I did (the phone I use now was, in fact, handed down from her). My own account only has two games, both gotten and played in 2018. I counted up the amount of games I've played on her account in the last ten years, and at twelve, it's kind of laughable that it's a higher number than the count of games I own for each of several game systems I own myself (or don't own but for which I have games). Then again, only one of those iOS games, plus an expansion for another game, actually cost money, and even then, the expenditures only totaled about $5. I paid more than that for my cheapest GBA game, Tales of Phantasia (new; $8 in late 2006). Has anyone had to handle a PSP screen in which a vertical section is duplicating the graphics of the same width of space right next to it? My PSP-2000 started doing that a few months ago, at the left edge. With my PSP being my all-time favorite game system, I'm a bit sad about it. onmode-ky P.S. I just discovered that I'm apparently blocked on Twitter by CheapAssGamer. It looks like I only ever interacted with them twice there, once in 2012 and once in 2016, so if it's the latter that resulted in the blocking, they must really not like it when people correct their English grammar. Hmm. P.P.S. Forgot to mention: the North American PS Store for PSV did indeed drop video content commerce operations after August ended. Specifically, the whole Video side of the Store disappeared. I was still in it when it went bye-bye, so I could still see that certain product entries were suddenly lacking Buy and Rent buttons, and also some product metadata, but eventually, the search engine stopped giving me results to check on. Previously cached search results even auto-reloaded themselves into zero results. The march of progress.

Damn it, I really did not intend to be AWOL for so long. Life just keeps finding things to get in the way. I checked a few days ago, and the PSP's NA PS Store is still in the same state as it was in my last report; i.e., you can successfully enter the Store, but there are no browsing tiles in either the Game or Video sides, and any attempt at a search, in either side, returns nothing but that 80551001 error code (of course, both sides' download lists still work). I did, however, find something had changed in the PSV's NA PS Store, specifically in the Video side of it. Now, I should first note that https://www.playstation.com/en-us/support/important-notice has shown for some time (since early July at the latest) that the PS Stores will be discontinuing movie and TV rentals and purchases "after August 31st." In the early morning hours of August 25th, I happened to go into the Video side of the PSV's NA PS Store, and I was met with error NP-2244-2, "The connection to the server or device has been lost." The screen was mostly blank, missing the browsing tiles that would normally be there. However, the search engine still worked, and you could still open a search result and be met with rent and/or buy buttons for any non-free content. Thus, its state mirrors that of the PSP's NA PS Store back in mid-July: error code when you go to the Video side and find it without browsing tiles (80551002 in the case of the PSP, as I noted in my last post), but search engine still allows you to make rentals and purchases. However, based on that Important Notice message, I guess the ability to rent and buy things will go poof at the end of the month. I've been trying to gear up to getting back up to date with plug-n-play data, and I came across the PasocomMini, a Japanese product line (currently with just one product, though a second is also listed on the line's website) developed by HAL Laboratory consisting of functional mini replicas of old Japanese computers, namely the PC-8001 and MZ-80C (both of which were Z80-compatible machines; the former mini is the currently available one). You spend over 27,000 yen, plug the system into power and an HDMI display, and you can play the handful of included games, right? . . . No, because you also need to plug in a self-supplied keyboard and/or gamepad, not to mention the connector adapters you'll probably need. Just check out this page: https://www.pcmini.jp/product_pc-8001/peripherals/ . If it doesn't come with its own controller, then I don't think it can rightfully be called "plug-n-play." So, I won't be including it in my data after all. I've also been monitoring the number of games in the PS3's North American PS Store, and I've seen the total count (as shown when you first enter the Games category, which supposedly includes all games for all platforms in the Store) drop from 226x back a couple of months ago to 2228 as of the beginning of this weekend. Mind you, though, I have to say "supposedly" because that "complete" listing definitely omits some games that you can nonetheless still find from the search engine. Still, whatever it actually includes, the number has dropped by no small amount, and I have no idea (besides the Namco Museum PS1 Classics) what has recently been eliminated. I should note, incidentally, that the Namco Museum PS1 Classics are at least still in the Japanese and Asian PS3 PS Stores. Have any of you gotten a TG16/PCE/CGfx Mini, which Konami produced last year? A squirrel got into my family's apartment back when I was a kid, maybe 6 years old. The incident included my mom (or me?) standing on a table to get away from it, because it was hyper and just about ransacking the place. I remember trying to get it out from behind the refrigerator, and I think we finally managed to get it out through a window. As for your mystery animal, do you happen to have a sematary nearby? Atariboy, if you really want to get rid of your peanuts, you don't need an animal to take them from you. ;P onmode-ky P.S. Hey, hey, this is my 888th post!

Sadly, the closure of the shopping cart on July 6th/7th was not the end of Sony's changes to the PSP's PS Store. I continued to check the [North American] Store's status periodically since then, and the first major change occurred sometime between my checks during the afternoons (EDT) of July 14th and July 15th: the Video side of the Store lost its main menu browsing categories, so that it ended up looking like the Game side, just a column of blank rectangles. However, as with the Game side, you could still run searches and open up search results' item descriptions, and you could still download free things but not put anything into the shopping cart. Also, going to the Video side for the first time in a PS Store session would pop up an 80551002 error, just like when you start the Store session and get the error with the initialization of the Game side; I'm guessing that error may be tied to having no browsing categories to display in the main menu. I continued checking the PSP PS Store every day or two, and when I checked it sometime in the middle of this past week (i.e., maybe July 21st, plus or minus a day), there had been no further changes. I didn't try visiting again until a bit after midnight today (July 25th), and whaddaya know, big, major change. Sometime between the ~21st and the 25th of July, 2021, the search engine stopped working. You can still enter the Store, go to the Video side, go back to the Game side, and look at your download lists for both sides . . . but if you try to run a search in either side, using any type of search (like "all," "title," "cast," etc.), error code 80551001 pops up, and there are no search results. So, you can't see anything anymore in the PSP PS Store. Even the Pulse videos, music tracks, and wallpapers that you could still download for free previously, and which you can't get in the PSV and PS3 PS Stores, all of that stuff is no longer available. The PSP PS Store is, effectively, now empty. D-: I was afraid that the shopping cart's closure wasn't the end of Sony's changes, and unfortunately, those fears were justified. Let it be recorded that the PSP PS Store truly went silent in the fourth week of July 2021. onmode-ky

Here is my enormous overview/review of TV I've been watching lately. Season 3 of Thunderbolt Fantasy has wrapped up, and while there has not been any official announcement of a season 4 (that I've heard of), it's got to be intended. Season 3 ended with a pair of critical surprise revelations that veritably scream, "To Be Continued!" At any rate, overall, I was quite satisfied with season 3. The world of Thunderbolt Fantasy opened up so much more in this season than in any previous entry in the series--really, the nation of Dong Li (AKA Touri in Japanese, it's the land where season 1 took place, east of the mountains) seems a whole lot less interesting (read: less messed up) than the nation of Hsi Yuu, where we spent season 3 (AKA Xi You when written in pinyin (blech), Seiyuu in Japanese, it's the land west of the mountains). Hsi Yuu's got a corrupt government, an even more sinister "rebel" force, a history marred by demonic influences. And then there's the fact that season 3, for the first time in the series, actually showed and featured characters from the demon world. I also have to say, the big turning of the tables that happened at the end of the season truly took me by surprise. Obviously, there would have to be some way for the good guys to gain an advantage, but the manner and extent of how they did so was just outstanding. There was honestly a moment in, I think, the second-to-last episode of the season (episode 12), when I thought, "Wait, a vanilla rallying of the troops by this new character? Is this being played straight? So we're losing a major series protagonist for good?" . . . They got me good. I didn't see the flip coming. Other TV I've watched these past few months include, as usual, the Arrowverse offerings on CW. Black Lightning concluded, coming in at four seasons, 58 episodes. I was satisfied with how it wrapped up, though the final battle did come and go a bit suddenly. One detail I found interesting was that, of all the Arrowverse shows, BL was the only one who had a single enemy appear throughout the series, across seasons; typically, each of the shows builds a season around one enemy (or two, in the case of recent The Flash seasons), who is finally defeated at the end of the season. Sure, sometimes defeat doesn't mean an enemy doesn't have later appearances, but BL was unusual in that a major enemy in season 1 continued to be a major enemy throughout the series--it was always a different major enemy defeated at the ends of BL seasons 1-3. Whale got to be the only major enemy, finally, in season 4. I'm somewhat sad that the show concluded, since it was always strong in its superhero family dynamics (meanwhile, in terms of actual superhero combat, I generally felt BL didn't do it as well as its Arrowverse peers), but it had a good run. Speaking of superhero family dynamics, the new Superman & Lois has been very impressive so far. It honestly does feel simultaneously more cinematic and more intimate than other Arrowverse shows, because it's all about the earth-shattering (literally) events surrounding one family and their small town life. I have quite enjoyed the show's depiction of Clark Kent and Lois Lane, and the mysteries of who the antagonists are and what they want have been developed and eventually revealed with superb pacing. I'm looking forward to the climax of the season. On the other side of the World's Finest coin, Batwoman's second season was surprisingly good. The show had an uphill battle to climb after actress Ruby Rose quit the lead role after one season, but they managed to build a compelling story around a new Batwoman--and around the first Batwoman, who was ingeniously easily recast because face replacement was already an important element from the first season. : D The new Batwoman grew into the role well, and on occasion really does seem like a better fit for the show (to be honest, though, I would be totally okay with having two Batwomen, because I just like both characters). Also of note, I finally, finally came to like the character of Alice. In season 1, where she was the lead villain, I was always struck by how, well, sane she was so much of the time, which didn't seem to fit the narrative's claim that she was a homicidal monster. Season 2 reveals that the abuse we saw from her childhood in season 1 did not in itself make her the way she is, but rather a selective brainwashing afterward that amplified her rage. Thus, she's not "crazy," per se, but rather abnormally volatile and vindictive. It took season 2 for Alice to at last "make sense" to me. Supergirl's last season (season 6) is in progress but on hiatus right now. So far, I've liked the early episodes' complete separation of Supergirl from the rest of her team and family. We've ended up with desperation on both sides to find each other, and it seems like the season's villain is, for the first time, developing from someone who was an ally. DC's Legends of Tomorrow is, er, still going. My least favorite Arrowverse show, it sometimes has moments. The last few minutes of a recent episode had the show turn into an animated Disney musical, somewhat reminiscent of the episode a few seasons ago where the cast was turned into puppets. Still, the series plays even looser than the other series when it comes to the science part of science fiction. Another recent episode had the captain saying the galaxy is millions of light years across, which is a massive overstatement. Outside of Arrowverse series, I've been watching the reboot of Kung Fu. It's not bad, with some enjoyable mythology about eight ancient mystical weapons, but some of the fight choreography is not, um, Hong Kong-style enough for me. Probably still well beyond what the previous incarnations of Kung Fu did, though (I don't remember). Of some note, there was an episode in which a bad guy was played by the guy who had played Kenshiro in the Fist of the North Star live-action movie from the 90s. How was that for a wall of text? onmode-ky P.S. Two highlights from Batwoman season 2: 1. the Batmobile returns! 2. in possibly the goriest scene in all of the Arrowverse, a giant rotary saw sawed a man in half, partly on-screen.

So, at the time of my previous post, a little before 9 PM EDT on July 6th, the PSP PS Store was in the same state in had been in for the past 5 years. No areas to browse, but you could still search for things and put them into the shopping cart (and as shown above, the Video side even had areas to browse). However, I checked again at about 1 AM EDT of July 7th (i.e., a few hours later, and still July 6th in a non-trivial chunk of the world), and a single, significant thing had changed: you could no longer put anything into the shopping cart. You could try either the Buy Now or Add to Cart buttons, but a second or so later, error 80551023 would pop up, and your cart would be empty (interestingly, Google reveals no occurrences of people complaining about this error before, ever, so it must be a rare animal). At last check a few hours ago, meaning roughly 36 hours after I first saw the Store like this, it was still in the same state. Obviously, it's possible that Sony is not done with however far they're going to close things down, but if the breaking of the shopping cart functionality is all that will be done to the PSP PS Store, that's relatively great. We'll still be able to search the Store and read game descriptions and size requirements, and we'll still be able to download all the freebies--including the stuff that can't be found in the PSV and PS3 PS Stores. I'll keep monitoring periodically for further changes to the PSP PS Store, but hopefully this state remains for a while. Maybe a chupacabra? Chocolate. No, Potato. Micro? Oooh, Sahoy! Endale would be too obvious. I too am impressed that you've managed to get a chipmunk, of all possible hyper-paranoid creatures, to allow you to touch it. Did you lace that food with marijuana or opium, to mellow it out? ;) Maybe you're pulling a fast one on us, and it's just a stuffed chipmunk! Also possible that you're not a real human. JeremyR, that 20-year turtle visitor of yours, you're certain it's always the same turtle? I realize turtles can live a long time, but er, personally, I wouldn't trust my own ability to differentiate between two turtles of the same species. And 20 years! How could it like you enough to stick around so long? ;) Then again, you've got a woodpecker conversation partner. Oh, and a belated Happy Independence Day to my fellow Americans. There was fairly cool weather in my area on the holiday, for once. I know it was the opposite for some other areas of the US. onmode-ky

The last day for commerce operations in the PlayStation Store for the PSP's store client was originally announced to be July 2nd, at the end of March when the original plan was to shutter the PS Stores for PSP, PS3, and PSV. That date stood even when the closing plans for PS3 and PSV Stores were canceled. Then, on or just before July 2nd, an announcement at https://www.playstation.com/en-us/support/important-notice updated the PSP PS Store's final date to July 6th (not a typo, as the Japan-region edition of that page specifically stated that this was an update to the previously announced July 2nd date). As it is now that day, I thought I'd post some bits about the closure. First, some photos of my final on-PSP purchases from the Store, on July 1st (before I knew about the extension). I put Generation of Chaos: Pandora's Reflection (Generation of Chaos 6 in Japan, the most recent game in the series and the only one developed by Sting) and inviZimals: The Lost Tribe (the third of the PSP's trilogy originating Sony/Novarama's inviZimals augmented reality IP) in my shopping cart: The PSP's PS Store was "closed" in 2016, but in reality, it was just the user-friendly browsing functionality that was eliminated; you could still use the search engine to find games (or DLC add-ons, demos, game videos, PSP themes, etc.) and either download free things directly or put paid items into your shopping cart. I had known about this hidden-ish capability for years, but I'm not sure I had actually bought anything, i.e., gone through the actual checkout process, until this exercise a few days ago. Anyway, after funding my PSN wallet via PC (no PayPal option on PSP), I tried to check out, but for some reason, it kept insisting the password I was typing was wrong--this was clearly not true (the PSP's text entry screen--quick kudos to the full QWERTY on-screen keyboard that was implemented in a late 2008 firmware update--doesn't obscure whatever you're typing as a password, so I knew it was typed correctly), so I worked around it by disabling my standard "re-enter password at checkout" setting for the time being. I still don't know what was going on with that error message, but after making that change in my settings, checkout was successful. Proof positive that Sony's 2004 hardware (2007 in my case, since it's a PSP-2000) could still make an online game purchase in mid-2021! I downloaded Generation of Chaos: Pandora's Reflection (note the curious "Generation of Chaos 3" in the photo, which I suppose comes from the fact that it's only the third GoC game released in North America--echoes of ye olde Final Fantasy VI -> Final Fantasy III renumbering) directly to my PSP, but for the much larger inviZimals installation, I opted to avoid unnecessary battery usage and go the PS3-to-PSP transfer route later. It's worth noting that while the Game side of the PSP's PS Store is deceptively blank, the Video side is not. Check out the difference (I should note that the inversion of the Store's background gradient is there for real, not as a trick of inconsistent photography): Game side - Video side - Those menu selections on the Video side aren't empty, either. They are entirely populated . . . with items as recent as late 2016, maybe early 2017. Here's what's in New Releases: Top TV Episodes has a bunch of The Flash episodes from its third season (2016-2017). I should note that the same Video-side categories and the same outdated selection of items are also in the Video side of the PSV's PS Store. Meanwhile, the PS3's PS Store totally lost its Video content a few years ago (outside of the ability to stream anything already in your account, from the My Videos selection next to the Download List). This will all be moot soon, since the overall Store will be dropping commerce of movie and TV content at the end of August. Another side note: I either never knew this or forgot, but the Download List within the PSP's PS Store (the icon that's second from the right in the top right corner) is actually isolated to the side of the Store you're on. That is, if you're in the Game side, the Download List only shows your games, demos, DLC, etc., while if you're on the Video side, the List only shows your movies, TV episodes, etc. It makes for less scrolling, and the PSV splits the List nicely like that as well in its Store (though you don't need to switch Store sides to do it there). The PS3's Store, however, just gives you the whole List to scroll through. Lastly, I'd like to mention that even though PSP content generally will still remain available to buy, through the PS3 and PSV's PS Stores, there are some things that are in the PSP's Store but not in the other two platforms' Stores. I identified and downloaded around 150 free PSP wallpapers and 19 free music tracks (18 MP3s and 1 WAV, all from Sony games, while the wallpapers included third-party ones). The Japan- and Asia-region PS3 PS Stores do have sections for wallpapers, but the North American PS3 PS Store does not (FYI, system themes can be found in the PS3 Store). So, on this side of the planet, at least, the closure of the PSP PS Store really will completely eliminate availability of a few things. Of course, some things were already gone--there was a wallpaper for Hoard, sure, but the actual Hoard game was not in the Store, apparently delisted at some point, just like the Tetris, Top Gun, and Days of Thunder Minis. Also, the PSP's PS Store has the most complete collection of the old Pulse periodic promotional videos that PSN used to produce, hosted by Christina Lee. The PSV's Store only has the last few, from 2012, while the PS3's Store . . . well, I can't find them there at all. BUT, the PlayStation account on YouTube has virtually the same amount of Pulse content as the PSP's Store does (though it seems like each has something the other doesn't). At the time of my posting this, the PSP's PS Store (North American) is still open, and you can still search for and put things in your shopping cart. Really not sure when the shutdown is going to happen. I'm kind of saddened, though, that my backup PSP, a PSP-3000 that's still sealed, will never be able to poke around in the PS Store and buy things--yeah, yeah, I pondered opening it up just to have it do something now, but that would be missing the point of it being my backup PSP. My workhorse PSP, though, at least it got to connect to the Store for the last ~13 years. Alas, the era is coming to an end. I'll miss it! Oh, the humanity! Oh, the technology! onmode-ky

Heh, I always enjoyed the Brigadier's interactions with the various Doctors he encountered over the years. At any rate, cool to discover Jon Pertwee was in The Avengers. I don't recall seeing him in any episodes of the show I've ever seen (rented some DVDs of it back around 20 years ago, around when the Ralph Fiennes/Uma Thurman/Sean Connery The Avengers was in theaters--which I did see, and kind of enjoyed, despite its critical drubbing). Something incredible recently happened in the ongoing third season of Thunderbolt Fantasy, and I'm not sure whether the average watcher of the show would be aware of the significance of what they saw (minor spoiler alert for the rest of this paragraph, if you're more than a couple of weeks behind in the show). First of all, the season has done an incredible amount of elaboration on the backstory of the world setting, and most recently (for those of us seeing episodes a week late because we're not premium members), the origin of the divine weapons (the Shin Kai Ma Kai (Japanese)/Shen Hui Mo Hsieh (Mandarin)) has been revealed. They apparently all come from a guy from another universe. When he first appeared, I didn't see the significance myself, but then I noticed, in the Crunchyroll comments for that episode, speculation that this guy might be the legendary protagonist of Pili's main (i.e., domestic Taiwan) puppetry shows, Su Huan-Jen. And then it suddenly hit me--he probably is! He's dressed in all white, his name means "white lotus" (Su Huan-Jen's nickname, so to speak), and I noticed from the episode's credits (before I saw the speculation) that he's voiced by venerable voice actor Koyasu Takehito . . . who, as I remembered from my research in 2016 into the history of Pili Multimedia's international efforts, voiced Su Huan-Jen in Japan's localization of the Pili movie from 2000! Thus, this is a thinly veiled crossover of traditional Pili into Thunderbolt Fantasy! I was--well, not blown away, perhaps, but excited to see a line being semi-explicitly drawn between the two universes. Almost as good as when the DCEU's Flash suddenly appeared in the Arrowverse and met its Flash. Probably a little bit better than when Stan Lee appeared in the Teen Titans theatrical movie. ; P Anyway, I've really been enjoying the season for all its revelations. I was surprised at first that it seemed to be a direct continuation of the season two story, but then I realized that season two itself was basically the cracking open of the door leading to a wider exploration of the Thunderbolt Fantasy world. onmode-ky

I wrapped up all of Black Rock Shooter: The Game's post-game content in early May--well, actually, it was the end of April when I first did it as a test run, but the run where I actually saved, and then also refilled my inventory to full, was a few days later. The final mission, in which you first fight every previous boss (but each with only one of their normally two life bars), was almost easy, thanks to having finally acquired the most powerful attack skills in the game; if I were quick and lucky, I could actually take them out before they even had a chance to do anything. The last part of the mission, defeating a souped-up White Rock Shooter (the final boss of the main game), still with two life bars, wasn't that bad, either . . . because I allowed myself to use two of the Max Charge rare-drop items that immediately recharge all your skills--hey, it's the final battle of the entire game, so where else am I going to use them? However, getting those two items again, to fully stock my inventory for my final game save, took a while, so that was the trade-off. I replayed Stage 2's final mission over and over again, trying to get that stage boss to drop a Max Charge, reloading whenever he dropped something else (a health pack) instead. The nonstop reloading eventually got so tedious that I came to think, "Hmm, maybe the item to be dropped at the end of the next mission played is already predetermined as part of the save data, so that the first time playing after a reload is always going to be the health pack and not the Max Charge," so I began reloading after two failed attempts instead of one. I have no idea if that hypothesis was true, but hey, I did get the Max Charges fully refilled in my inventory on a second run of the mission after a reload. In the end, my final save file for BRS has 35:44:39 time taken. I believe this is far longer than the typical player's playthrough of the entire game (as is normal with me playing any game, of course), but I'm not entirely sure why. I was actively trying to minimize time recorded into save data, hurrying through areas and not doing as much of my usual leisurely exploration, but even just beating the main game for the first ending took me 22:33:12--still much longer than most people would take. Perhaps, though, it all comes down to how I played the battles, rather than how I spent time outside battles, because I always tried to finish battles with full life and no items used (i.e., I wouldn't kill the last enemy until the health regeneration skill had fully replenished my life). On any single battle, that might add a small bit of time, and maybe all those small bits together tacked hours upon hours onto the overall time. At any rate, I enjoyed all that time spent with BRS enough that I'm actually replaying all the story missions right now, but with the alternate costumes equipped (and with stealth mode activated, so no enemies chase me). Currently about halfway through the story. I should also note that, while I was wrapping up BRS on my PSP, I also played a little bit of Breath of Fire III (for PSP, the download from the North American PS Store) on my PSV. I got hung up when I discovered that having one of the party characters kick NPCs might yield items or money . . . which led me to start backtracking in order to kick people I'd already passed. That never ends well. onmode-ky P.S. Something I'm not playing now, despite having received it about a month ago: my Kickstarter backer copy of R-Type Final 2, with soundtrack CD, art book, Kickstarter slipcase, and keychain. After all, I can't play it until I have a PS4 or PS5.

Sorry for the long absence. I'd love to blame it on the deluge of Brood X cicadas where I live, but it's just a case of not properly making time to post at AtariAge. : ( Why does he do his eating on a roof? I mean, he's a groundhog. Did you set up a cafe up there? While I do have both the Vanguard and The Next Space Minis, and I do own a PS TV, I do not have a PS TV that can connect to either PSN or the game backup libraries on my PS3 and PC Media Go (the PS TV is on an old firmware, as its intended purpose is to be a purely offline PS Mobile machine--though, certainly, it only includes the PS Mobile games of my library that are actually PS TV-compatible). What I can tell you is that my download list includes multiple SNK Minis that cannot be downloaded to my PSV: Vanguard, Sasuke vs. Commander, Chopper I, and The Next Space. As for Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, I don't have easy access to my PS3 disc right now, but I think that the way it worked (don't quote me on this, as I last ran the PS3 disc many years ago) was that, in the XrossMediaBar after you put the disc in, there's an icon for obtaining the PSV version, possibly beneath the icon for starting the PS3 game. So, you select that, and some stuff happens that gets you the Cross-Buy download. However . . . maybe this memory simply came from some crazy fever dream. ; ) I haven't made any of the game purchases I noted above yet (in no small part because of Sony relenting on their Store shutdown plans). Two new maybes are in my PS3 shopping cart right now, though, a pair of visual novels published by Sometimes You, who dropped several (all?) of their PSV games' prices to $0.99 recently. Super Life of Pixel nearly dropped off the list when I discovered a humongous storage footprint listed for it in its entry in the PS3 Store; however, I'm guessing that was either its Cross-Buy total storage footprint or the PS4 version's footprint, because a number of online sources say that the PSV version is roughly 700 MB, not GBs in size. I'm also still undecided on whether to get even one of the Invizimals PSP games, because none of them are under 1 GB in size. Space isn't much of an issue on my PSP, where swapping MSPDs is easy, but swapping PSV memory cards is risky (particularly for PS Mobile games; I'm still paranoid that a card swap may kill their activation status) and tedious (at last check, game icons get shifted all over when you switch to another memory card and then put the first one back in). With Invizimals games being well suited to the PSV's built-in camera, rather than my needing to break out my PSP camera, the PSV's available storage amount becomes a concern. Here's one of the photos I took recently of the cicadas occupying my neck of the woods (just three of the millions (?) flocking around): I like how my 2007 Nikon point-and-shoot can still take some crystal clear shots. onmode-ky

I didn't watch Bristol, but after the fact, I did notice it on the TV schedule and thought it odd that network television would have live broadcasted a dirt race . . . because I thought they were talking about dirt buggies (or whatever they're called) and not full-on NASCAR stock cars. I don't think I knew there had ever been dirt races using them before. Thanks for the update on plug-n-play. I was in the middle of collecting data on the games in the TG16 Mini when things got back-burnered. The Astro City Mini is something I've been aware of, as well. I've made no decision to get either one myself, incidentally, though in the unlikely event that I do go for the former sometime soon, I think it would be the PC Engine variant, since that's still available at MSRP from Amazon Japan, rather than the pumped up third-party prices for the TG16 Mini. From your list, I already have HAL 21, The Next Space, and Marvin's Maze (and have had the first two since they released), and I consider them worthwhile buys. If I remember correctly, The Next Space is a little cryptic, though, with its weird upgrade system. I never did get any sort of light gun game for my PS3, even though I have a PS Move setup. I do enjoy those types of games (consider that I do own Star Wars: Blaster Strike, the 2015 standalone light gun system made by Jakks Pacific and HotGen), but none of what we got released on the PS3 ever really caught my eye. I haven't sat down and compiled a list of what I'll get from the PS Store before the PS3/PSP/PSV Store closures yet, but here's a list of maybes that I've had for a while: - The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky SC (PSP/PSV; still not sure if I should instead get the PC edition at GOG) - Generation of Chaos: Pandora's Reflection (PSP/PSV; not actually a maybe, as I'll definitely get this at some point) - the three Invizimals PSP games (PSP/PSV; cheap and unique, but huge footprints) - Secret of Mana (PSV) - Super Hydorah (PSV) - Vasara Collection (PSV) - Super Life of Pixel (PSV; from Super Icon, once a frequent Minis and PSM developer) - Emerald Shores (PSV; from Fordesoft, who started on PSM with Super Blackout, the native PSV version of which I already have) - Scram Kitty DX (PSV; from Dakko Dakko, who developed a couple of Minis) I've also wondered if I ought to finally buy some Japanese PSN voucher codes (always at a disappointing exchange rate) so I can get some games from the Japanese PS Store, like maybe the following: - Thunder Force V: Perfect System (PS1 Game Archives) - Starblade alpha (PS1 Game Archives) - Galaxian3 (PS1 Game Archives) - Star Soldier (PSP) I never fully explored the 800+ titles of the Japanese PS Store's Game Archives (Classics, in North America) catalog, but the PS1 games above are some that have caught my eye. Star Soldier, one of the PSP's first scrolling shooter releases, is a game whose UMD edition I wanted a long time ago, but it never got cheap enough for me . . . and now it's really expensive, so no-go there, but in the Store, it's fairly cheap. Anyone have any thoughts on the titles I've listed? onmode-ky

I'll try to find time to watch those WKRP episodes. Thanks for the recommendations. As for Daktari, I've never heard of that. It sounds like some sort of bootleg Atari . . . or maybe a new enemy in Wing Commander. I'm excited that season 3 of Thunderbolt Fantasy is finally airing (available, for Americans anyway, with English subtitles at Crunchyroll; free (ad-supported) viewers like me will have to wait a week after each episode's premiere to see it). : D After a delay from autumn 2020 to spring 2021 due to COVID, it's here at last! Also amazing, on April Fools' Day, there was a 5.5-minute crossover collaboration video posted to YouTube featuring Saber from the world of Fate (the collaboration specifically cites Fate/Grand Order, the mobile game, but the Altria/Arturia Pendragon Saber is one of the original characters from Fate/stay night) appearing in the world of Thunderbolt Fantasy. The video is labeled as being viewable for only a limited time, so check it out ASAP: - the version posted by the Taiwanese side of Thunderbolt Fantasy's production, PILI Multimedia (has Chinese subtitles, with Japanese audio) - the version posted by the Japanese side of Thunderbolt Fantasy's production, Good Smile Company (no subtitles, with Japanese audio) - a behind-the-scenes making-of clip for the video, posted by NOW 電玩 (officially romanized as "DianWan," but I'll provide "DyenWan" as more accurately representing the phonetics; means "Electronic Gaming"), which seems to be a Taiwanese gaming channel (no language barriers--watch for the second guy throwing the Saber puppet, as he nearly falls over when throwing) I don't believe there is any official English-subtitled version of the crossover video, but the gist of what's going on isn't too hard to catch. Nonetheless, here's a brief summary. Series protagonist ShangBuHuan/ShouFuKan (name in Mandarin/Japanese) is in the midst of fighting a group of baddies, when the last one standing removes his mask and takes control of Shang's body using some sort of glowing-eyes magic. As he's about to force our hero to commit suicide, Shang's comrade/bane LinXueYa/RinSetsuA appears, and the baddie tries to make Shang kill him. Shang tells Lin to escape, but Lin points out that if he leaves, the baddie will get his hands on the Sorcerous Sword Index that Shang's been carrying with him since Season 1 (it's a scroll within which is sealed a large collection of ultimate-weapon type swords). During Shang's forced attack, Lin manages to get the Index out of Shang's clutches, and as it falls to the ground, it unrolls a bit. One of the swords visible is labeled (in Japanese, as opposed to all the others' Chinese) as "Promised Sword of Victory," though it's a sword Shang has never seen before (all the Index's swords were sealed into it by him, so this is an anomaly); the sword is immediately recognizable to those of us in the know, though, as Saber's Excalibur. The sword materializes out of the index, and shortly afterward, in dramatic fashion, Saber herself appears as well, in her iconic arrival stance. Her puppet is really quite remarkable, incidentally, with absolutely amazing eyes. She (voiced, as always, by Kawasumi Ayako) does her typical "Are you my master?" line, yadda yadda yadda, she gets into an intense battle with Shang, which ends with her invoking Excalibur's Noble Phantasm and killing the baddie who was controlling him. Shang apologizes for getting her embroiled in their mess, and then just as Saber is about to leave, Lin offers to have her enjoy some of the Dongli/Touri region's food--at Shang's expense. The ever-hungry Saber immediately accepts the offer, and they saunter off to culinary delights unknown. Here's where I'm not sure what's going on anymore: what we've been watching ends up on a screen in a sci-fi-styled room, where Saber is watching while eating crackers. Saber says, "I see. As in this story, there have been occasions of being summoned to other worlds." She gets up and leaves. This must relate to some aspect of the Fate series I'm not familiar with. At any rate, that scene switch concludes the crossover video. Fun stuff! Make sure to see the making-of, too! onmode-ky