KeyGlyph's Streams & etcetera

[pierrot]

What are these Ninjas you speak of? The only turtles I know are Heroes.

Silly, AJ. Turtles aren't delicious sandwiches.

[Key-Glyph]

What are these Ninjas you speak of? The only turtles I know are Heroes.

Silly, AJ. Turtles aren't delicious sandwiches.

Well, here's what happened when I did that Google search:



Also guys, today's Wednesday stream is being postponed because I'm sick, but Thursday should still be on. <3

[MrPopo]

Those cookies look delicious. You didn't happen to see a recipe to go along with the picture, did you?

[BogusMeatFactory]

I'm about to go all cookie monster on those cookies! OMNOMNOMNOM!!!!

[pierrot]

I'm kind of sad I missed you playing Ristar (pronounced a bit like "wrist," in Japanese). I could have saved you two from a lot of aggravation. I feel like Ristar is actually a pretty perfectly balanced game in terms of difficulty and accessibility. It is somewhat challenging at times, but easy to get into, with tons of subtle gameplay mechanics lurking beneath the immediately recognizable stable of maneuvers Ristar has. The final boss is pretty ridiculously difficult, though. I don't really know how far you two ended up actually getting, but I would really recommend going back to Ristar on your own some time. Nothing against your copilot, or anything, but he seemed to be reacting pretty swiftly, and a bit negatively to some poor assumptions. I just think it would be too bad if that colored your perception of the game much.

Anyway, those gondola things in the second fire stage can be steadily raised or lowered by grabbing onto the pulley rope next to them, and by the time those jelly mobs with the wheel of fire circling them show up, the game sort of expects that you've mastered killing enemies while jumping them. So, if you start jumping it, and grab it in the down, or diagonal direction, then quickly release to headbutt it before continuing too far along the jump arc, you should be able to kill it without suffering damage. Also, there are bonus stages that are hidden in each level, that reward you with treasures, if you can complete the trials in the time limit. Usually they're some sort of platforming coarse, related to the level that you entered from.

I was kind of hoping to see you get to the snow level, because Ristar has a great idle animation there, it has my favorite music in the game, it has really fun stages, and I really like the boss. It's a snowman in the US version, but in Japan, it was a cat, thing. In either case, it doesn't like hot foods. There's this term in Japanese for someone who has a sensitive tongue (like, usually to describe someone who has a hard time tolerating hot water/tea/etc), which is 'neko-jita,' which would literally translate as "cat-tongued." I also enjoy the shooting star being hit in the head by a falling star when Ristar loses its last health point. There's a lot of great humor, and cuteness to the game. I wish Ristar didn't seem so underappreciated, considering all the love, care, and attention that clearly went into making it. Hopefully you still feel like playing it more in the future.

[Xeogred]

It was awesome catching the Ristar stream (seeing Ed too!), to my surprise along with Emily and Ed's... Ristar is harder than I remembered.

Did they ever beat the fire world? I had to hit the bed after they were stuck there for a bit.

[Key-Glyph]

Aw, thanks for the feedback, guys! I'm sorry we didn't push notifications for the Ristar stream that night. We might have said so in the video, but we weren't sure we were going to be able to do it until the very last minute. We didn't want to psych everyone up just to make an "actually nevermind" kind of post.

First of all, I freaking loved Ristar. On our second run we flew through the stages we were familiar with, and we got up to the act after the metronome stuff. We didn't die there -- we just ran out of time, and we have a save state that we'll be continuing with someday. And pierrot, we definitely would have benefited from having you there! But you might be proud of us in part two. We figured out almost everything you mentioned above on our second pass.

I'm a little sad if I came off as frustrated in a bad way, because I was truly enjoying the crud out of the game. Even when we were stuck, I was enjoying the learning process. I think when I publish part two it'll become much clearer how much fun I was having, because I just loved the metronome level so much.

I'll be working on uploading part two this week. It's been taking a while because I've had to manually drop in the music tracks due to a volume issue we were having that night. Can't be uploading Ristar videos without that music coming through crystal clear!

Oh, and pierrot, about the pronunciation -- I forget where I was told this, but I was once emphatically instructed that Ristar was not pronounced phonetically Japanese. Is that wrong? Or do the two regions say it their own way, like Street Fighter's Ree-yu/Rye-oo split? You are an authority I would trust on this!

[pierrot]

Oh, and pierrot, about the pronunciation -- I forget where I was told this, but I was once emphatically instructed that Ristar was not pronounced phonetically Japanese. Is that wrong? Or do the two regions say it their own way, like Street Fighter's Ree-yu/Rye-oo split? You are an authority I would trust on this!

I think it would be too presumptuous to call myself an authority on this, but I think I know what you might be alluding to with the alternate pronunciation; I don't really recall the reasoning, but I think I vaguely remember hearing that some promotional material, or some Sega employee in the West called it 'rye-star.' I've always pronounced it like the Japanese title, anyway, so good old confirmation bias, that's worked for me. It'll probably be eternally debated, but even from an English perspective, I can't really think of any examples where that phoneme (/ai/) wouldn't be attributed to a "gh," or consonant and "e," proceeding the "i." Neither of those cases would apply to "Ristar." I'm not really bothered by any pronunciations of it, though. It's not like it's really a Japanese word, anyway.

Although, I was actually just thinking that I'm a little surprised they didn't name it something like, "Ryu-star," since 'ryu-sei' is the word for "shooting star," but that might actually be where the "Ri" comes from, since 'ryu' is basically a conjunction of 'ri,' and 'yu.' (Technically I'm ignoring an extended vowel sound for simplicity's sake.) That's probably way more analysis than is really called for, but--.

First of all, I freaking loved Ristar. On our second run we flew through the stages we were familiar with, and we got up to the act after the metronome stuff. We didn't die there -- we just ran out of time, and we have a save state that we'll be continuing with someday. And pierrot, we definitely would have benefited from having you there! But you might be proud of us in part two. We figured out almost everything you mentioned above on our second pass.

I'm a little sad if I came off as frustrated in a bad way, because I was truly enjoying the crud out of the game. Even when we were stuck, I was enjoying the learning process. I think when I publish part two it'll become much clearer how much fun I was having, because I just loved the metronome level so much.

I'll be working on uploading part two this week. It's been taking a while because I've had to manually drop in the music tracks due to a volume issue we were having that night. Can't be uploading Ristar videos without that music coming through crystal clear!

Oh, I didn't realize you would be posting a second Ristar video! That's exciting. I sort of assumed from the fast-forwarded stuff at the end that the stream sort of ended shortly after you started over from the beginning. I don't really want to disparage Ed at all (I don't know him, or his work), but I got this impression from some of his reactions that he wasn't really enjoying it because Ristar wasn't explaining itself in the ways he might be used to, and/or expects. I didn't think that was necessarily your experience. I was just hopeful that his experience wasn't negatively affecting your experience. I definitely don't blame either of you for not quite knowing what was going on at first, either. I had no idea what to do with the pulleys in the third level, the first time I played it. While I was watching, there were a couple times where I was almost shouting out loud, "You've got this! Hit grab!" while you were sitting in the trolley, looking at the rope, though.

I'm happy to hear you enjoyed playing Ristar. I'll be looking forward to seeing the second half.

[Key-Glyph]

Hey folks!

I wanted to let you guys know that I'm trying out a more aggressive schedule for streams these days because of all the fun I'm having with them. I updated the first post itself, but I'll paste the scoop below as well.

As always, my streams are angling to be very laid-back spaces for folks to chat with each other and reminisce. Beating games is cool, but that's not the crux of my game nights. It's about hanging out and having fun, so if you're into that kind of atmosphere... always feel free to visit!

Apple IIsdays
Tuesdays, 6 PM Pacific: Extremely casual meanderings through my Apple IIe software. Captured from genuine hardware, AKA my actual childhood computer!

Retro Thursdays
Thursdays, 6 PM Pacific: Pre-7th generation gaming. Mostly 8-bit and 16-bit, mostly emulated. Always chill.

Sunday Supplementals
Sunday, 4 PM Pacific: Occasional streams of ongoing playthroughs, non-retro, and repeat games. These are bonuses that don't happen every week, so please keep an eye on notifications if you're interested!

[marurun]

That sounds awesome. Glad you’re enjoying it enough to up the schedule.