Pokemon Art Academy complete!

So, it’s been a long while since the game has been released, but today I finally managed to complete every lesson + quick sketch thingy. You can check out the “ceremony” in the video below for doing that along with all the various drawings I’ve done:

I kind of liked the license design I had from just completing the normal licenses, but oh well! Every single drawing shown are ones from lessons with the exception of three:
1. Jigglypuff – I wanted to see if Free Paint ones were needed so this was a test. They were not :P
2. Pikachu dressed as Mega Audino – For the Cosplay Pikachu Contest
3. Mega Audino – For the Favorite Pokemon Contest

But yes, it was a fun game and helped me understand construction shapes a bit more! I’m still kind of awful though. Especially at drawing Pikachu despite that being the final exam for each part… But yes, I shall end this with the lovely certificates!:

And if you’d like to see all the art that was shown in a gallery over a video, you can click here for the Pokemon Art Academy Game Diary page.

Pokemon Shuffle

So, Pokemon Shuffle came out today! It’s a fairly cute game–somewhat similar to Pokemon Trozei, though, I honestly prefer this game. It is free to download, though, the catch is the game is very heavily based off mobile games. You have to wait to get more “hearts” in order to enter a Battle. Each Battle costs a heart (a heart will replenish every 30 minutes), you can buy gems to replenish them instantly (and sometimes get gems for free in the game itself) and also for coins which can be used to get power-ups and great balls.

So far, I’ve only purchased gems once. I have been able to get some of the harder to get Pokemon and you can watch an hour my playthrough of the game below:

That said, while you do not need to pay for anything, the game requires a bit more luck for some things if you don’t–you’ll see a good example when I’m trying to catch Torchic which starts at 45 minutes and 10 seconds or so in. And don’t even get me started on the expert timed ones T___T

You can also check out the trailer below:

Plus Mega Audino is in it and is the first Mega you get and that is amazing:


LOOK HOW CUTE SHE IS.

But yes, despite some frustrations with the heart regeneration and how few coins you really earn, I’ve found myself having a lot of fun with it. Remember, it’s free to download so there’s no reason not to give it a try!

Tomodachi Life: Newest SpotPass Item & Updates

It’s the 26th of the month which means a brand new SpotPass item!

The Clothing Shop Uniform. It is available in Pink, Hot Pink, Light Blue, and Black. Keep in mind that you have less time to get it as February is a shorter month! I was kind of hoping for a late Valentine’s Day thing or even something silly for President’s Day, but oh well.

Besides that, most of what has been happening on the island is still lots of kids. Many new ones were born:


And most went traveling:


Though, I did move one in!:

And a new couple ended up getting together withRagna setting up Misora and Solo:

Plus, we even managed to get a new camper!:

Along with a letter from one of the kids already traveling:

We also had lots of fun news updates:




Finally, if you missed it, some of the shops had decorated for Valentine’s Day!:

Note: I received the game early from Nintendo. Thank you, Nintendo! :D If you are interested in Tomodachi Life, you may want to look into picking it up!

New Club Nintendo items are up

As mentioned, Club Nintendo did say they’d be adding new items to the store this month and on the first business day of February in the early morning hours, the site went down coming back with various new items. Our first priority was easily the physical items as neither of us enjoys downloading games. If you have less than 150 coins though, you will not be able to afford anything.

Since my fiancé and I both put coins into the one account, we each picked an item. I chose the Animal Crossing playing cards:
600_ACCards1

Close runner-up:
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2016 Desktop Calendar. I really like the 2015 look (as shown), but without knowing for sure how it’d look.. well… I also would like something I’d probably have around longer.

As for my fiancé, he picked the Majora’s Mask Messenger Bag:
600_MajoraMask_bagdetail_b
He loves Zelda and needs a new messenger bag so!

Runner up:

He really likes Deity Link and if this was a poster, I think he’d have gotten it immediately, but because it is a puzzle, there would just be no where for it to go for a long time. I think if we ever see it for sale somewhere, he will have it. If it was a poster though, I think we’d still be deciding as I sadly only had 1,400 coins available.

Also a close contest for him was the 3DS XL pouch:

As for Smash fans, you’ll be happy to see the next set of Smash Brothers posters:
600_SmashGroup2
I do like them, but it wasn’t as big priority for me as the first set.

Finally, there are A LOT of games available and no limit on these so if you don’t want any of the physical items, there may be stuff for you!

Heck, I even saw things I’d want if I didn’t already spend all my coins.

So, some highlights for me and/or m fiancé from the game list (aka games I’d have gotten if I got all the physical stuff I wanted):
Game & Wario (Wii U) – 600 Coins
Harmo Knight (3DS) – 300 Coins
Fluidity: Spin Cycle (3DS) – 300 Coins
New Super Mario Brothers 2 (3DS) – 600 Coins
Clu Clu Land (Wii U) – 200 Coins

I would say Game & Wario and HarmoKnight are the big ones for me though along with Clu Clu Land which I’ve been pretty intrigued about. Also tempting even though I still have the original game– Super Mario World (Wii U) – 200 Coins and Mario Party 2 (Wii) – 250 Coins.

Edit: My fiancé has claimed this section for more of his own picks:
Golden Sun (Wii U) – 200 Coins
Mario vs Donkey Kong: Minis March Again! (3DS) – 200 Coins
The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening (3DS) – 200 Coins

But yes, if you have some coins to spend, be sure to do so! You have until the end of June 2015. Also the code for Flipnote Hatena 3D will be out through the “To-Do List” sometime this week so keep an eye out!

Tomodachi Life: New things for February

So, it is officially February 1st which brings us both a new SpotPass item and a new interior today in Tomodachi Life!

To start, the brand new SpotPass item–a Football Uniform!:

Most likely being released to celebrate the fact that today is the Super Bowl. I personally prefer the Puppy Bowl (and it is what I will be watching), but regardless, this outfit is available in Red, Blue, Purple, and Grey. Even the shopkeepers are getting in the football spirit it seems:

As for the monthly interior, we have the new Skyscraper interior which is largely based off the Fancy Dinner Proposal area:

Anyway, as for random happens on Pink Sea Island…


Link proposed to Zelda and they quickly had their wedding ceremony.

Conan asked Mysty out:

She said yes.

We received some letters and visits from some of the kids who have gone off traveling:

Along with new children being born:

And more being sent off to travel as well:

Random News & Birthdays:



Finally, I’ve been getting QR requests again… Please read the FAQ on the QR page for any QR questions before asking. I will not put up any QRs of real life people I know or characters I’ve made up that aren’t already there.

Note: I received the game early from Nintendo. Thank you, Nintendo! :D If you are interested in Tomodachi Life, you may want to look into picking it up!

The Lost Valley

If you caught my stream yesterday or watched it on Youtube, you’d know I finally started playing Harvest Moon: The Lost Valley. It’s not that I wasn’t interested in it–Harvest Moon games in general (and I know some people consider this a “fake” Harvest Moon game–I consider both this and Story of Seasons part of the franchise personally) tend to start off slow and Lost Valley is no different.

That said, once I’ve kind of figured out my way around, I started to enjoy it a lot more. I do have some issues with it (I have tons of trouble with landscaping in general so this game is just… incredibly hard for me all around with that), but I still think its a fun game in itself. I do wish characters couldn’t spawn places you can’t get to though… Like, I mean, you could try and make a path up, but I literally ended up doing this from the start of the day until 4AM at one point to get to a character. It just gets kind of ridiculous at times trying to traverse this giant area and essentially the only fix is doing a ridiculous amount of landscaping which takes up a lot of time. Like this may be the first game where I’m not sure when my character will get married. I wish you could invite others to your town as it’d help a lot x-x I’d love to just get everything level (minus certain parts like my way up to the Goddess’ Spring) so I can start doing things… but it’ll be a long time for that.

At least my animals will stay with me. And I really love the cow designs in the game.

But yes, I’m honestly looking forward to playing it more and while it isn’t perfect, most Harvest Moon games aren’t. There’s definitely stuff I’m not looking forward to in Story of Seasons and I feel this game is being too harshly judged.

On Collecting and Commissions

Despite the name, I’m not entirely sure what order this entry will go (you may be in for a mixed bag), but I kind of wanted to talk about it anyway!

When I’m not playing or streaming games or writing about games, one of my favorite things to do is collecting. Besides my recently made when Mega Audino ended up being leaked collection…:

(look, I even have a cute Collector button: that I made myself >>)

I’ve always collected quite a bit of things. Some of my collections include:
-Dolls (I have so many Barbie Dolls from when I was younger, a complete set of the McDonalds ones they had a tendency to do in the 90s, a few BJDs, several Pullips, an American Girl (Samantha!) and then various dolls of other brands such as Monster High and Liv Doll)
-Plushies (I really can’t go full into what I have here as there really is just that many, but I have a whole bunch of Beanie Babies plus Duffy from Tokyo Disney, 3 UniBEARsity Bears (though, only one is here–two are on the way!), and a Pink Disney Bear from before Duffy became Duffy)
-Cards (Besides a complete set of the Beanie Baby cards when they did those, I have every Pokemon card from the first series (so essentially the Kanto gym leaders are the last set I collected) as well @-@ I still have some random cards to this day–when I stopped doing full sets, I tried to get a lot of Promos and yeah…)
-Rocks (All kinds–I’ve never been too big on jewelry, but I love rocks and gemstones of all varieties.)
-Seashells & Bottled Sand

And of course, Amiibo is just one of the many things I’m collecting right now as well. While I’m not collecting all of them, I still have quite a few I want. I’m happy I managed to preorder the Peach & Toad Mario Party 10 Amiibo–I just need Rosalina and then I’m set for Wave 3… Though, my fiancé has several he wants from the newest wave. @-@

One thing I’ve always enjoyed doing is buying cute creations by various artists on Etsy and DeviantArt and similar websites. I love plushies a lot along with cute sculpted charms and I have so many things from various artists over the years.

The one thing that always surprised me about it though is when it came to OOAK (One of a Kind) products. For me, it always seemed surprising as if the person who made it enjoyed making it and a lot of people liked it, why wouldn’t you want to make it again? Obviously, making other stuff is a given (not many people want to just make the one same thing over and over), but I never really understood why people didn’t want to make things for more people.

I suppose it comes down to those things being worth more in a way–not only just supply and demand, but someone feeling they have this super special thing because they are the only person with it and for me, unless it’s actually a person’s OC, that has never really been something I felt.

I have a lot of things in my Mega Audino collection along with various Custom Pullips that are OOAK. But if the artist decided to make more of it, I wouldn’t be upset. It doesn’t make my item any less special, you know? But that’s something I’ve noticed most people do not think like that. It becomes a huge issue on websites too as I find it incredibly frustrating to be halted by some item limited to such a tiny amount on a website with so many people and I guess I just always look at it that way. Why should more people having something ruin the specialness of yours? I know if I ran into something and fell in love with it and knew it’d be out of my hands forever, I’d be sad. I wouldn’t want someone else to feel like that.

Moving on, commissioning people is always a hard process for me. Partially because I’m really shy and I dislike bugging people, but also because I have a terrible time estimating prices and I don’t want to say no if something is too much because I don’t want anyone to feel bad. It’s not that their prices are too much–it’s just not something I can afford at the moment.

Similarly, after being snapped at for correcting someone, I have a hard time telling someone something is wrong. I’ll love it even with mistakes, but its something I really need to get over at some point. The one thing that frustrates me the most though is when I’m given no updates at all. I’m a very patient person–as long as you keep me up to date, I will wait. I know things can come up, but I think even one message a month or maybe every couple of weeks if I can see the person still being active isn’t that hard.

For example, I commissioned something in August 2013. I received something very similar to it and bigger that I commissioned later by someone else before this was done. Contact has been random and constantly getting worse and despite having finally seen it done earlier this month, it still hasn’t been shipped for whatever reason despite being told so.

If I was just told “Sorry, there’s a shipping delay. I’ll be able to try and ship it *DATE*”, I’d be fine, but at least respond. This isn’t the first time something like this has happened, but it is easily the worst I’ve had to deal with.

And when it comes down to it–I don’t want a refund. I want what I paid for. :( It can just be kind of disheartening. And this kind of stuff plus the rarity of Amiibo is probably why I will never end up being comfortable sending any off to customize which stinks as I’d really really really like to.

But yes, I shall end this here. I really enjoy collecting–I just wish it didn’t always become a competitive mess or a endless wait :(

Club Nintendo’s Closing :(

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t upset… but wow am I upset. Most people felt this was coming with the closure of Japan’s, but I really didn’t want Club Nintendo to go. I just wanted it to get better. I wanted to see the rewards become equal between all the regions. While I can hope that the items they put in are both some great new items and maybe some we never saw come over, I’m trying not to get my hopes up. To be honest, I’d still just rather Club Nintendo stays.

That said, Nintendo WILL be announcing a new program at a later date according to the press release: “Nintendo of America will be announcing a new customer loyalty program at a later date.” I don’t know what the program will be, but I hope it won’t be digital only.

Thankfully, the items that will be put up in February for points to be spent on will be both physical and digital. Though, according to the FAQ, it seems the Platinum and Gold rewards will once again be digital downloads unfortunately. Due to the closure, these will be available to choose from in April.

The last day to do surveys is the end of March. Anything released from today onward will most likely not contain a Club Nintendo code (Quoting the FAQ: “Please note that products released after January 20, 2015 cannot be registered at Club Nintendo, and will not be eligible for surveys or Coins”). And you will have your coins until the end of June so be sure to spend them.

Anyway, I hope whatever they switch to won’t be too different, but if they have to close versus a transition, it isn’t likely :( I just really hope it won’t be digital only, but I will miss registering my games. I still have everything I’ve ever gotten from Club Nintendo. I think to this day, the pink Animal Crossing fan is still my absolute favorite.

But yes, I’ll miss you Club Nintendo. Thank you for the farewell gift of Flipnote Hatena 3D (finally! Yay! Though, I still wish we received it on better circumstances). I will try and look forward to whatever you bring next month.

You can check out the closing FAQ by going to Club Nintendo or clicking here.

In which I talk about Arts & Crafts

One of my favorite things to do in school was whenever we had Arts & Crafts. This was also my favorite thing to do in a camp I would go to at one of the places we had family vacations. I loved putting together everything, whether it be a Popsicle log cabin, a flower made of tissue paper, a paper bag puppet, just painting/decorating some boxes/sculpted things, or just cutting things out into shapes, I always enjoyed it.

Unfortunately, it is something I’ve never been particularly good at. If you give me all the pieces already good to go, I may be able to pull out something:
princessraspberrygiggle
This is Princess Raspberrygiggle, made with help from my fiancé from a pattern by Eyes5.

This is the first (and currently only) plush I have made from scratch–others already coming with the fabric already in shapes and just needing to be sewed together in…whatever that basic stitch is called (is it even a basic stitch? DO YOU SEE HOW LITTLE I KNOW ABOUT SEWING).

While I’ve had another pattern I’ve bought that I’d love to try, it has mostly been sitting here as I’m still really too new to do it. Maybe one day (and if I DO manage to, I’ll obviously write about it!).

Plushies are definitely the #1 thing I’d love to do at some point, but between my lack of artistic skill and lack of knowledge on how proportions and anatomy even works, I’m not even sure where to get started on making my own patterns–I can barely even visualize all the shapes in my mind.

That said, with plushies not going to work and after some silly conversations, I decided to play around with puffballs–both a more anatomically correct one and one that was based off a Weepul:

It was a lot harder than expected though and still didn’t come out perfect.

So, I decided to have some fun with Clay… Attempt #1 was a mess:

Baking it went even worse:
megaaudinoclay3
It had a terrible journey–between being made in a hotel room, having to ride hours in a coffee cup, accidentally being thrown out by my mother, shipping through Fedex (where it looked like it got punched in the face due to being stuffed with tissue paper), and then it burned in the oven. I’ll still keep and love you, poor first Mega Audino sculpture. Kind of reminded me of this:
sailormoonshingo
Except even that is better.

Regardless, despite feeling discouraged and hating myself for continued amount of suckitude, I decided to go ahead with an attempt two:
megaaudinosculptmegaaudinosculpt2
Which managed to come out SLIGHTLY less awful. Baking wasn’t perfect, but still went a lot better than the other one:
megaaudinobakedfront

It was then time to paint… and well…
whhhhhyyyy
;~;

Thankfully, with the power of glue:
megaaudinopainted
And that is the Story of Mega Audino sculpt attempt #2.

I’m not sure what I’ll end up making next, but my fiancé REALLY wants me to try making him a Victini & Espeon. I’m pretty sure attempt #2 was a fluke though so I don’t know if I’ll ever make anything even close to decent again :(

In which I talk way too much about Style Savvy 3 (Girls Mode 3)

One of my favorite things to do when a new Nintendo Direct airs (besides watching it live–its always best to watch live and see others reactions at the same time!) is to check out the other Nintendo Directs too–it usually can give you an idea of games to look forward to (from Japan’s) and games you could hopefully be seeing soon (from Europe’s). While this isn’t always the case (so many games that never come over and even Europe gets some exclusive stuff like the Mario & Sonic Olympic Card album ;~; ), it still can get me pretty excited and Japan’s Nintendo Direct on Wednesday definitely ended up getting me the most excited for the game with the announcement of the 3rd installment in the Style Savvy series (Girls Mode in Japan). I already included the video of the opening in my entry 2 days ago so I won’t post it again, but I’d recommend watching it if you haven’t yet!

The opening though is just a fraction of some of the amazing stuff in the direct itself:

(Starts at about 38:40 in!)

One thing I’m excited about is it seems you will once again be able to customize your room (if not possibly more). I hope you will also be able to customize outside the store and maybe do more customization inside the store as well versus preset themes.

The game will have around 19,000 clothing options which is almost double than the previous game in the series had. I’m hoping this will mean a lot of styles and various colors–I always found lots of various pink shades I liked, but it was rare each outfit piece I picked actually matched color-wise… One of the biggest things I hope though is that we won’t have anything removed this time. The asian store for males had been completely removed from the US game which is incredibly silly considering they kept the Kimonos & Yukatas in for girls. Not only that, I feel like this is part of why we never received the update… I don’t think we ever will at this point, but hopefully we still get the third installment of the game over here.

But please, Nintendo, stop removing things from it. It’d also be nice if the downloadable items were available everywhere and not just one region :( I really liked some of the outfits Japan received…

Moving on, there will be over 1,300 combinations of hairstyles. I’m guessing with that many streaking will be back, but that is still A LOT. I’m hoping maybe we can mix and match fronts and backs of hairstyles–maybe different bangs with various hairstyles–possibly the ability to have hairstyles in both up and down versions? I just can’t wait to see what they will do.

I’ve never been a big make-up person so I never even really used the shop ingame, but I really like how you’ll essentially be doing it all including modeling. It just sounds like a full package rather than just one part of it. I do hope the game will have a better date progress though–please pick either real time or not and not the weird combination of month only. The fact that it was October for about 80% of the time I played Trendsetters was super depressing.

But the feature that has me most excited is we can FINALLY make our own designs! The templates to start look great and it seems you can modify them and I am just SO EXCITED. I hope shops won’t be region locked this time so you can get other people’s designs too. Maybe through QR codes like Animal Crossing? I’m really curious to how it’s going to work–I hope there isn’t a small limit on them.

Hopefully we’ll hear about a release date for the 3rd game in the series over in the US soon! Afterall, the game comes out in Japan in about 3 months. It’s too bad there’s probably no chance for a game like this to be a worldwide release :(