Games Galore~

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Ah, jeez! I can’t think of a good introduction! Oh well, I guess hello always works; hello and welcome to Weekly Ramble number 21. As you should know I am James and I am here to ramble about anything and everything that I can think to ramble about! This weeks is pretty packed with news concerning some Video Games that greatly interest me and so I’ll have some ramblings about “Hatsune Miku’s Project Diva f” “World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria” and “Black Rock Shooter: The Game” I’ll also briefly stop by “The Creator’s Corner” to see what’s up with “RE;Inspiration: Titan II” and, as always, we’ll see what’s new on “Semajj’s Bookshelf” and then we’ll hear another new exciting “Song of the Week”!

The first game I’m going to ramble about today is “Hatsune Miku’s Project Diva f” for the PlayStation Vita. This week there were two new videos, the first was a promo for the game and it shows off a few of the songs featured in the game as well as the augmented reality features that work with the PS Vita’s cameras. The second video was just released this morning and is an eight minute long showcase of the game and its songs. You can see both videos below:

Project Diva f will be the first Project Diva game that I will be lucky enough to own. On top of that, the new LE Hatsune Miku Crystal White PS Vita that I ordered along with the game, will be my first hand-held game system since the original Nintendo DS back when it was released almost eight years ago, so I’m pretty excited about that as well. I may not buy too many games for the Vita once I get it, but who needs other games when you’ve got Project Diva? Well…

The second game I’m going to talk about is “Black Rock Shooter: The Game” which launched in Japan for the PSP in August of last year. Sometime around the Japanese launch of Black Rock Shooter NIS America announced that they would be bringing the game to the states, which was awesome news, but then nothing more was said about the game. Almost a year later we finally get some news about the localization of “Black Rock Shooter: The Game”. On Tuesday the CEO of Imageepoch came forward and said that they were still working on the English version of the game and that it will be finished soon. It’s not a release date, but hey, at least the project wasn’t scrapped. I just hope that since they’ve taken this long to get the game here we’ll be able to download and play it on a PS Vita; otherwise I might have to start scouring the “used PSP” market for a good deal so I can get my Black Rock Shooter fix when it comes out. I’m hoping that we see “Black Rock Shooter: The Game” here in the states by the end of the year but at the same time I want the developers to take their time and do it right.

Lastly, for the video game news anyway, is a game that I don’t have to get a brand new game system to play and that is “World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria”. Ever since the official announcement at last year’s BlizzCon I’ve been impatiently waiting for the next bit of MoP news and early this week Blizzard sent out a certain piece of information that got me really pumped! Wednesday morning Blizzard announced the official release date for Mists of Pandaria!  On September 25th, 2012 we’ll finally get to see what’s behind the mists that surround the mysterious island of Pandaria! Unless you’ve played the beta, then you have a pretty good idea of what’s behind the mists, but personally I’ve done my best to not play any of the 85-90 content in the beta and I focused mostly on the new Monk class, the Pandaren starting area and Pet Battles. I can’t wait! I can’t believe that there are only two months left!

While I’m on the subject of Warcraft, the winner of the WoW contest has been notified so if you entered the contest and haven’t checked your e-mail lately, please do so to see if you are the lucky winner!

Okay, enough video-game news, how about we talk about “Titan II”? In some sad news “Titan II” isn’t finished yet and won’t be finished today, but I’d say there is a 95% chance that we’ll see “Titan II” up on Smashwords by next Friday. I’m sorry for taking so long but I want it to be as awesome as I can get it. The story is solid at this point; I know where TII starts and where it ends. The characters are set; I know who is introduced in TII and how they work in the story. The only problem I have is interaction between two of my characters, I think in my latest re-write I’ve gotten their “problems” in a place where they work but there are still a few scenes and details that I need to work-out. Hmm, what else can I tell you about “Titan II” we get to meet Jacobi’s crew and a few more members of the Windsor’s crew. We get to see what happened to Jacobi and who he really is, and we get some real action! It’s not a lot of action, most of the big action scenes are in the third part, but we do get to see a few confrontations!

It seems lately that I’ve been in a “blah” writing mood when it comes to writing my rambles. It feels like they aren’t as content packed as they used to be, maybe it’s because I’m spending a lot of my creative energy on “Titan”. Hmm maybe I’ll go back and read my old rambles and see what’s changed. But before I do that why don’t we see what I added to “Semajj’s Bookshelf” this week! This week I added a World of Warcraft Trading Card Game Loot Card to my collection! The “Sand Scarab” is the newest companion pet to be added to Warcraft via TCG loot cards and now it is the newest companion to be added to my collection, bringing my current number of pets to 190! Wow!

This is a cover of a song from the Disney movie “Aladdin” sung by the Japanese voice-actor Tomokazu Sugita. A pal of mine from [/AMP/] posted this song on the thread earlier this week and I’ve been hooked ever since. Well that’s all I’ve got for today, I hope you enjoyed my rambling; and, as always, if you have any comments, questions, tips or concerns you can let me know in the comment boxes below or you can e-mail me at Semajj07@gmail.com. Until next time readers, keep on gaming!

The End

Yo! How’s it hangin’ dear reader? I hope that all’s well for you as you sit here reading this Weekly Ramble. I’ve got lots to say so let’s just jump right in, shall we?

Today’s ramble is a pretty special ramble but I bring with it some sad news. I’ll save the sad news for a bit later in the ramble because who wants to get hit with sorrow as soon as they walk in the door, huh? So I’ll start off by directing us to a certain corner occupied by a certain persona of mine: “The Creator’s Corner”.

If you’ve been following my rambles you may know of a certain story project of mine, I like to call it “NEw”. For those of you who don’t know “NEw” I’ll do a quick rundown for you.

“NEw” is a series of books that I plan on writing -in fact as soon as I finish the “RE;Inspiration: Titan” trilogy I plan to start on some “NEw” related things- and have been lazily working on for a few years now. In recent times I’ve put on my serious face and have worked it up and/or down and I think the general story/plot line is somewhat solid. As far as I have planned “NEw” will have eleven “books” but I have yet to see the end of “NEw” and have been stuck at the end of “book” eleven for quite a while now. And this leads to the real meat of today’s “The Creator’s Corner”:

I, after many months of searching, have finally found the beginning of “book” twelve of the “NEw” series! I can’t share any details (not that there are any real details on any other “books” in the “NEw” series) but having come up with this continuation I feel like I’ve taken a huge step in the right direction. I really feel like patting myself on the back for having overcome this obstacle and hopefully I can continue to “storycraft” “book” twelve in the weeks to come.

Speaking of weeks to come, as this month, July, comes to a close “RE;Inspiration: Titan II” also draws nears its final stages. I’ve started on the final draft and will hopefully be finished with it sometime next week, then after some rigorous proof-reading I’ll be ready to release the sequel to “RE;Inspiration: Titan”! So I hope you’ll be looking forward to that sometime in the next two weeks.

Ready for some sad news? I am!

It took some consideration, but I have officially decided to end my game of “Rambler versus the World”. For reasons I’d rather not explain, although laziness plays a small part in it, I’ve decided to put my game on hold. I might get back to it, but with all that’s going on in my life at the moment I cannot keep up with all of my tasks. To be honest it was the little tasks (reading, watching a DVD and posting) that were killing me, but the “Post 20 MOTs” per day was pretty hard to meet sometimes as well. Will I resume my game? Maybe, probably, but when I do I’ll probably have a few changes to the tasks; but who knows. I suppose the real reason I started playing “Rambler versus the World” was to get me writing again, and with “Titan” doing as well as it is I think that my motivation is pretty high right now, so I don’t need the game. So from now on you can count on “Rambler versus the World” being absent from my Weekly Rambles.

*sad face*

Did I scare you? Did you think that the bad news was something bigger than that? No? Oh well, moving on; who wants another contest? Yeah, me neither, what with the fantastic track-record that I’ve had with contests here before (one entrant, lol) but hey the prize for this one is something I was going to have sitting around anyway so I figured I’d hand it out to someone!

Have you heard of the video-game World of Warcraft? Have you ever wanted to play this video-game but were scared away by the monthly fee? Well if you have been interested in World of Warcraft but didn’t want to or couldn’t fork up the cash to play I have some news good news for you! Blizzard’s Recruit-a-Friend program just launched a new mount, and if you ask me it’s a pretty snazzy looking ride. In order to obtain the mount I need to “recruit” a friend to the World of Warcraft, and so I am offering one lucky reader the chance to play World of Warcraft on my dime (at least for the few months that I need to buy in order to get the mount).

So if you are interested in winning this free World of Warcraft game-time all you need to do is e-mail me at Semajj07@gmail.com with the subject “Weekly Ramble WoW Contest” and tell me which class you would play if you were to win the prize. You can go here to find information on all of the classes that are available to play. The winner will be chosen randomly next Friday so don’t wait too long to enter!

One last small ramblegraph before I wrap this thing up. Earlier in the ramble I said that this was a pretty special ramble, which it is, and here’s why: It’s Weekly Ramble Number 20!

That’s pretty good, this is the twentieth Weekly Ramble that I’ve had the pleasure of writing for all of you readers out there. I’d like to thank anyone who reads these rambles for continuing to give me your support, so: Thank you, very much. Like, from the bottom of my heart, thanks!

And before we end this let’s look at some numbers!

It’s been 21 weeks (I skipped one Friday due to Anime Expo) since I started rambling here and over the course of those twenty-one weeks I’ve gotten 1023 page views, incredible!

It’s been just about two months since I released “RE;Inspiration: Titan” on smashwords on May 25th of this year and since then I’ve gotten 124 downloads. That’s amazing!

And finally, just for fun, if anyone from /AMP/ is here and cares I’ve made 1854 MOTs since I joined back in January, pretty cool huh?

So once again thank you all for your continued support!

Oooh it brings a tear to my eye to see those numbers. I know not all of them are readers, some could be spam-bots or something, but even having a half of those numbers I’d be proud! So as we barrel towards the end of our twentieth ramble let’s check out what’s new in “Semajj’s Bookshelf”! This week, just this morning actually, I added the Black Rock Shooter OVA BD/DVD Limited Edition which is awesome because it has a ton of cool stuff; including a Black Rock Shooter and Dead Master mini-nendoroid! And now it’s time for this week’s two songs of the week.

The first song is a repeat, I believe, but it’s an amazing song none-the-less:

That was Redline Day from the movie Redline

And for the actual SotW:

That was “Ho Hey” a song that I heard for the first time yesterday, it’s by The Lumineers. And that’s that, like always if you have any comments, questions, tips or concerns you can leave a comment in the boxes below or you can e-mail me at Semajj07@gmail.com. Don’t forget to enter into the WoW contest if you’re interested and I’ll see you next Friday! Here’s to number twenty and twenty more to come!

And the Winner Is...

Hi this is a Weekly Ramble and depending on what time you are reading this ramble, Friday the 13th may have already passed, but as I sit here typing Friday the 13th is in full swing; the second Friday the 13th that a Weekly Ramble has landed on; what luck! But that’s not necessarily a bad thing because I haven’t had any bad luck as of yet. Oh I guess you could consider a certain something bad luck, but I’ll get to that later. Today I’m going to mostly focus our random rambling time on the Summer 2012 anime season which started about two weeks ago; but I’m also going to have our usual stuff like “The Creator’s Corner” “Semajj’s Bookshelf” the results for this week’s “Rambler versus the World” and a new “Song of the Week”! Plus it is Friday, July 13, 2012 so that means by the time that my “RE;Inspiration: Titan II” Cover-Art Contest is officially over! Shall we begin?

First, let me start by saying I’m still a series or five away from finishing all of my “Spring 2012” titles, AX and D3 wrought havoc upon my anime watching, so I haven’t even started watching any of the new “Summer 2012” titles, but I’m still going to talk about what looks good! To start off Crunchyroll is continuing to stream some continuing series, both long-running and two-season, such as: “Fairy Tail”, “Hunter x Hunter”, “SKET Dance”, “Sengoku Collection”, “Polar Bear Café”, “Space Brothers”, “Yurumate3Dei” and “Poyopoyo”. There are more “on-going” titles at Crunchyroll like “Naruto” and “Saint Seiya Omega”, but for time purposes I’m going to stick with talking about the shows that I’m watching and in the next segment, going to be watching!

Now is the part where I talk about Crunchyroll’s new simulcasts! First is “Total Eclipse” which I think is an alternate story in an already existing anime universe (Muv-Luv if I’m not mistaken, I haven’t done too much homework on this show) so I’ll have to do more research to see if this will make it to my watch-list. I’ll probably check out “The Ambition of Oda Nobuna”, but to be honest I’m getting a little tired of all the shows where the feudal warlords are turned into girls, so we’ll just have to see about that one. “YuruYuri 2” is an instant watch-lister, just because I enjoyed the first season so much. “Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere 2” is also probably going to stick around for a while, but if the story goes over the horizon into the land of nowhere I probably won’t stick around.

“Chitose Get You!” is supposed to be a slap-stick-esque comedy about a little girl causing trouble for everyone around her, so I’ll probably end up liking it. “Campione!” looks good from looking at the poster and reading further into the synopsis leads me to believe that this show will also make the watch-list this season. Harem love comedy filled with magical battles, what’s not to love? “So, I Can’t Play H?” *reads synopsis* it’s about a guy who is trying to help a Death God so he can recover his “perverted spirit”; sounds fun! Ha ha hah!

“Humanity Has Declined” looks pretty good, lots of colors, plus I like stories that are “a little strange and just a tiny bit absurd.” oh and there are fairies; so this will also get checked out. “Natsuyuki Rendezvous” is about flowers, ghosts and love, it doesn’t seem particularly interesting, but I’ll give it a shot. “Kokoro Connect” is another title that is most likely sticking around to join my watch-list, it is about a group of high school students who swap bodies and chaos and drama ensue. Mmm drama!

“La Storia della Arcanna Famigila” looks good, it’s about battles and “special powers” so if it has any hint of a story behind it, which it probably does, just read the synopsis, it’ll be good. Probably. “Tari Tari” is about high school girls and music and drama and I’ll probably watch it because I like music and drama… among other things…

“Sword Art Online”, I haven’t read a single thing about this show but I know I’m going to watch it. Simple as that. “Cardfight Vanguard” bleh. “PES: Peace Eco Smile” is a Toyota mini-anime so I’ll probably give it a watch, plus the aliens look like berries.

“Utakoi” is a historical romance, I might give it a look, but my plate already seems pretty full doesn’t it? “Hakuoki Reimeiroku” is the third season of an anime that I never watched, so yeah. And finally, for CR simulcasts as of now anyway, is “Dog Days 2” I saw part of the first season, I was a little bored by it, but people like it so I might give the “Dog Days” series’ a second chance; especially since CR is bringing the first season to their archive of anime goodness!

Wow-ee! That’s a lot of anime talk! Since I took up so much room rambling about what CR is bringing to the table this season, I’m going to keep the rest of the ramble relatively to-the-point! So let’s get to this week’s edition of “The Creator’s Corner”!

This week I’m going to talk about “short story” length. You probably already know this, but I am currently working on a short story, “RE;Inspiration: Titan II”, to be exact. And I’ll just lay some numbers out here. “Titan” was about 6600 words, give or take a few hundred. “Titan II” as it is in its almost-final draft, is 7200+ words, and this draft isn’t even close to being finished! So without going into too much talking about it and what not, if you are reading this and wouldn’t mind answering: Do you think 10,000 words is too much for a short story, or does it not matter?

Finally, before I move on to our closing statements I’m going to announce the winner of the “RE;Inspiration: Titan II” Cover-Art Contest! I only received one entry which could be considered bad luck, but it is a great cover and it was crafted by Megaflaem, my buddy from /AMP/! Below is his masterpiece:

Winding down, because I’ve already reached the target amount of words, let’s move on to the results for this week’s “Rambler versus the World”! This week I lost, a total failure, hah. 0 wins I earned this week, zero; which means that the World (who/whatever that may be) won seven times, yay World! And I didn’t add anything new to the “Bookshelf” this week, I’m still kinda recovering from the hole that Anime Expo burnt in my pocket, but hopefully I’ll get something new for next week! Finally we have this week’s Song of the Week, which is brought to you by LFG, enjoy:

That little ditty is from the “Looking For Group” movie that never got finished, but you can always check out the web-comic which is updated every Monday and Thursday! And with that I’ll end by telling you that if you have any comments, questions, tips or concerns you can e-mail me at Semajj07@gmail.com or you can comment on this, or any other of my rambles. That’s totally nineteen man, nineteen all the way through.

Special AX2012 Edition

Hello and welcome to yet another Weekly Ramble. It's July already; JULY! Where has time gone? I don't know about the rest of you, but for me this past weekend went by in a flash, leaving me reeling from it's blinding speed. And just like that, Anime Expo 2012 was over. So that's kind of a bummer, but hey, now I get to go back to work on Monday and make s'more money so I can buy even more stuff! Today's ramble will be mostly all Anime Expo related, but before I get to the AX stuff I'd like to ramble about a few non-AX things. Here we go:

First off, I apologize for not rambling last week, but rambling on a Wednesday didn't sit well, so I decided to skip it! Secondly I haven't been participating in "Rambler vs the World" this past week, but I plan to get back into the game soon, maybe by Monday so I can win this week, but who knows. Finally, I am holding a cover-art contest for "RE;Inspiration: Titan II" you can find the rules in this ramble: here.

Last weekend was Anime Expo 2012, more-or-less the highlight of my year, and I had a great time. It started off on Thursday, Day 0, with me meeting my roomies and then a few hours of waiting in line for badge pick-up. After that we went to a special dinner prepared for everyone in our hotel block at a small restaurant called Starry Kitchen. It was pretty good, if you ever find yourself there I would suggest the crab cakes and the crunchy tofu balls. On Day 1 I woke up early and went to the exhibit hall line to ensure that I could get my hands on a copy of a limited edition CD featuring Hatsune Miku. After exploring the exhibit hall and picking up a few things (more details on my loot later) I attended the Crunchyroll panel where they announced a ton of summer titles you can see what they'll be simul-casting here. When the CR panel was finished they cleared the room and I hurried to the end of the line for the "Mirai no Neiro - Sound of the Future" Vocaloid Panel and, much to my delight, during the Vocaloid panel we got a mini-concert! It was four songs long the first was preformed by Hatsune Miku Append, the second was by the original Hatsune Miku, the third was by Kagamine Rin and the fourth was sung by GUMI but Miku and Rin danced to it, along with Kasane Teto and a purple haired Vocaloid who I assume was a gender-bent Kamui Gakupo. When the Vocaloid panel finished I met up with some roomies and we went to the "AX Forum Meet & Greet" and we finished the night by watching the AMV Contest.

Day 2 started with another line! This time I waited in line for a continuation of the Vocaloid Panel,  this time they interviewed some of the creators and we got to see some brand new songs! After the Vocaloid Panel part two I meandered around the convention center some more (I like to meander) until I decided to get in line for another Vocaloid panel, this was the true continuation of the one from the night before and after replaying the mini-concert we got to see even more world premiere Vocaloid PVs. Then I went to the FUNimation industry panel where they showcased all of their upcoming projects. When that was finished I headed back to the hotel to turn in early, but thanks to a small snafu in communications I ended up sitting in the lobby for about six hours, lol.

On Day 3 I hung out with my roomies and we traveled from meet-up to meet-up taking many pictures of cosplayers from Durarara!!, Angel Beats and Vocaloid before rushing to Hall G to line up for the LiSA concert. The concert was great and even though I didn't know some of the songs I had a blast, especially when she got to the songs that I did know. After the concert we hung out, walked around and ate some food-truck food until it was time for the Masquerade. My favorite cosplay in the Masquerade was Black Gold Saw from Black Rock Shooter, she looked amazing!

Finally Day 4 came and after checking out of the hotel and checking my bags in at the con, I met up with my roomies again and we traversed the Exhibit Hall one last time before it was all over. It was probably about 13:30 when my ride called and asked where I wanted to meet them, and thus ended my Anime Expo 2012 experience. But hey, only 361 more days until AX2013! I'll be there, will you?

Okay I don't have a word counter on the program I am currently using, but I'm going to assume that we're just about done here, so I'll get straight into the special AX2012 edition of "Semajj's Bookshelf"! I got a lot of stuff, so I won't count everything, but I will cover the important stuff. First off I got some t-shirts, a few wall-scrolls, two Black Rock Shooter coffee mugs and a few CDs, including the special KARENT ft. Miku CD. More importantly I got a Black Rock Shooter plushie, awesome; a Nymph from "Sora no Otoshimono" Nendoroid, a Hatsune Miku Append Nendoroid, a copy of Wolf's Rain on DVD, Oreimo on DVD, Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt on DVD and AnoHana on DVD. But most importantly I got myself a pair of the brain-wave reading Necomimi! I'm pretty darned happy with the Necomimi, they are even cooler than I thought they would be!

There's your Song of the Week, it's "Freely Tomorrow" by Hatsune Miku Append, and it's awesome. Anywho, writing this while I'm on vacation is kind of a drag so I'm going to stop here, like always if you've any comments, questions, tips or concerns you can contact me via e-mail at Semajj07@gmail.com or you can leave a comment below! 'Til next time readers!