Woodlings draw near!

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Right, so, I hit LiveJournal's character limit right after getting kicked out of the gift shop, so now it's a new entry and more eavesdropping.

( Back to work! )

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In part three of my epic struggle to complete a Sierra game using two walkthroughs, we will hopefully finish with all this pre-museum wandering around the city and finally clear the way to the museum, which I am told is supposed to be the point of this game. Yes, davidn finished the entirety of Hugo 2--all of it--in two posts, but I apparently can't even get to the point where The Dagger of Amon Ra truly starts in under three. Sorry about that.
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davidn did a highly entertaining screenshots-with-commentary play-through of Hugo 2 sometime ago. I decided I should follow it up with a game from my childhood. I find my selection fitting, for several reasons. First, it's by the same company, which should tell you that we're in for a treat.


I will probably be using this as a reaction image a lot.

Furthermore, it is another point-and-click adventure game, and it also has a murder mystery plot (except this one involves murders that actually happen.) And with that segue, I give to you: the rather confusingly-titled Roberta Williams' Laura Bow in in: The Dagger of Amon Ra: A Laura Bow Mystery (I am not kidding) which even the game itself shortens to....


Laura Bow in: The Dagger of Amon Ra.
(I personally tend to shorten it even further by omitting the "Laura Bow in:" part.)
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PokePosts without making the obligatory metal lyric title just be Avantasia again: 3 0

(I would be very interested in seeing the "which bands got quoted how many times" stats after this entire run is done but they have to be the eventual winners. Hell, they have the honor of being the only band so far from whom I drew the titles for two different entries from the same song--at 3:35 and 1:47, respectively.)

When we recruited Gmork, I said that that should be the last special aside new recruit bio/intro entry for now. I was wrong. Like, the plan really was just to get those four newcomers--Badgertwo, Rock Biter, Priscilla, Gmork--and those four plus the people who were already there were going to be our Kanto team. That really was the plan. I left the door cracked ajar by using weasel words like "should" only because, you know, who knows? Maybe something unforeseen will happen, maybe I'll end up with an "oops I totally forgot I was going to pick up one of these mons too" realization, maybe I'll just happen across a mon that... actually you know what, I like this mon, let's use them.

So it is with our unexpected fifth Kanto newcomer out of four. Perhaps fittingly for an unexpected arrival whom we were not exactly planning to welcome, meet a lonely outcast, another example of a dark heart not necessarily being an evil one, yet one who struggles to find acceptance due to that perception. Someone whose quest to find someone who loves and accepts them started with none other than us.

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This should be the final new recruit introduction entry for now. The idea was to adopt our newly expanded team options right when said options expanded, which mostly meant right after finishing the Johto League. However, there is one more recruit who comes from a Pokewalker course that doesn't unlock until one actually acquires the National Dex, which we did in our last stream (part 21). We finally picked him up just tonight, so it's time to introduce you to the newest of the new kids.

We've met a would-be super soldier, a pensive guardian, and a diva who works hard and plays hard. Two of them even debuted (and did incredibly) in the last entry. Now, to complete this batch of new recruits, meet a conflicted and tormented soul, a dark heart in search of redemption.

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This is the third Special Aside entry to introduce the new Pokemon joining the team for our upcoming Kanto journey. It will be the last one until we're ready for our next actual playing session, though there will be one more after next session (since we can't get the fourth recruit we're planning on until we have the National Dex.)

Previously, we met Badgertwo, the fruit of a half-finished and all-unethical project to breed the perfect weapon, now rescued and learning what it means to enjoy life the way "imperfect" Pokemon do. We also met Rock Biter, a shy yet dutiful electronic sentinel searching for meaning beyond its service. While they come from different circumstances, each will need to learn how to forget everything they're "supposed" to be and to play and have fun, like Ethan and his Marill.

Now, prepare to change gears as we meet someone who is all about the fun. Meet a dazzling and flamboyant performer who is well familiar with the partying scene. She's flashy, flirty, and here to have a good time, but lest you underestimate her, she harbors a true and fearsome power behind that playful act.

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Now that we have conquered the Johto League, the entire Kanto league is upon us. This something between "postgame content" and "an entire additional game tacked onto the first game." Kanto is an entire region, you see--the region in which the generation 1 games took place, to be precise. Much like Johto, there's even an entire questline to get all eight gym badges before facing the ultimate challenge. On the other hand, Johto was clearly the "main story" of this game. The entire character arcs with both Team Rocket and Silver played out here. The ending was a suitably climactic showdown against the Elite Four and the Champion. There were even end credits. We saved and quit before this happened, technically, but very shortly (like, within the first few minutes of starting up) next time, we can expect to unlock the National Dex, which is usually around the point when most Pokemon games have declared it to be postgame time. "Yeah, you beat the main game with the regional roster, so now it's time to just open everything up and let you play with whatever at this point."

The end result of all of these mixed signals: We still have an entire region to go, but all of the safety locks are now disabled, or at least they will be once we get that National Dex. Our team options have already drastically increased, and we can expect them to increase even further very shortly after we start the next session. (I know using the Pokewalker already let us have certain Pokemon far earlier than it would be possible to obtain them within the actual game--ahem, hi Murkrow--but even by those standards the roster is about to explode. The National Dex acquisition will unlock about a zillion new Pokewalker courses, for one thing.)

This leads us to the point of this Special Aside entry, along with the next few that we intend to follow it. We're going to be getting a lot of new recruits in a very short amount of time, with potentially as much as half the team or more replaced either by next session or the one after. So that these all-new characters can better fit in with the established team whose heartfelt journey was built over the course of everything they've been to up to this point, I feel like the new recruits need... you know... an introduction. Who are these people, and what brings them to our team? Why should you care about them when the Neverending Six already have your heart? Hopefully by the end of this series, the expanded team won't feel as out of place compared to the ones who have been here from the beginning.

That said, the perfect example for what I mean and what I'm going for, the perfect introduction to this topic, comes with our first new addition. This is a Pokemon whose debut I've been planning and waiting for with excitement since early on in this LP, one with almost as much nostalgia and backstory to it as Empress Moonchild herself (even if for completely different, almost polar opposite reasons,) even if I was able to go without mentioning it and keep that fact a surprise all the way until now.

In this entry: Meet a science project searching for meaning. An engineered monster of sorts, born out of frustration and bred solely to be a weapon, now freed and left to learn how to live and love.

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And there you have it; our first new recruit. More new faces to meet next time, perhaps?

In this issue: Affiliate status! Our SoulSilver LP is actually finally coming back (I really hope penguinmayhem is still around)! The latest on that whole CD-i thing! Snakes! The writing backlog! And more! (Note: Maybe not more.)

( A long overdue update about all sorts of stuff! )

We try to do the gameblogging awards in December; they're part of our year-end wrap-up. However, this year, a dead coyote and an even deader mental state (which I haven't gotten around to writing about yet, appropriately enough) led to that slipping. So, uh, here we are with some belated 2021 game nominees.

2021 by the numbers: 24 games completed, 1 game abandoned, and 1 ongoing, for a total of 26 gameblogging entries. This narrowly edges out 2017 (the first year we ever did this, in which we had 29) as the lowest amount of entries in the history of us doing game writeups. You would think that losing my job and getting waylaid with the kind of ADHD and executive function struggles that left me practically bedridden for months on end would have led to playing more video games, because what else was I doing all day? But, uh, apparently not.

Some of these categories are bare enough that we may as well not have them, while others still managed to have a lot of great games in contention for a highly competitive award. Which ones are which? I guess you'll have to keep reading to find out.

( Onward, at last? )

The year is drawing to a close, and the title of this post doesn't refer to my or our intent to discontinue our yearly recap posts or anything like that; we're reporting as normal (sort of) and it's our lives that feel like this was the year that everything just kind of... stopped.


There's our former job, you see. ( Former? Ah, yes, about that.... )

Our mental health hasn't been great, either. ( You see.... )

Anyway, the point is, ( here's what our current employment and disability prospects are looking like. Buy some insurance pls? )

I know we've been dropping the ball on posts and stuff, too. ( So much to write... )

And, uh, that was our year, I guess. ( Normally we pick songs to represent the year.... )


It is my sincere hope that at least some executive function will be restored over the coming year, so the eventual 2022 writeup won't be as full of "yeah I know I was supposed to do the thing and I didn't, sorry" as this one.