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 :(

Tomodachi Life: The Newest SpotPass item & Island Update

So, it’s the 16th which means the second SpotPass item of the Month is out! This time, a Patterned Kimono.

It is available in Black, Green, Yellow, and Light Blue.

As for Pink Sea Island, it’s still been mostly quiet but there have been some new events recently!:
Brock proposed to Ran:

Zero set up Digby and Setsuna:

They are now dating.

We had a couple of new kids born that have be sent traveling to the StreetPass lands:


We also had a new Camper:

And finally, some random news:

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!

On Custom Amiibo with some bonus Nintendo Direct stuff

As I try to calm myself about the Nintendo Direct starting in under 20 minutes (which has started by the time you’ll see this! I’ll talk about some thoughts later on) from the time I’m writing this, I decided to take a few moments to talk about something that has been becoming more and more popular–Custom Amiibo. I love the idea of Custom Amiibo and wish I had the talent to even attempt something like that. Not to mention if you do need to get two of the same Amiibo, this is a great way to keep them apart.

That said, the fact that Custom Amiibo has started becoming such a thing has made certain issues I had with my Amiibo much stronger and even a bit frustrating. While I can easily look over manufacturer errors or lower quality, what gets me the most is what Nintendo didn’t do in the first place which makes the biggest offender… Villager.

Now, I can understand not making different color palettes. I don’t think there’s any specific color palette that is largely popular and making just the character itself is easily the best way to go with the best chance of people getting it regardless as it is still the character. My issue is why not at least make the first female and male character of each that have a gender difference? While I’m not sure about Wii Fit Trainer, Villager and Robin both have huge fanbases for both gender and the fact that only the male is shown for Villager means the male will most likely be the only one for Robin. I know this isn’t definite, but I would be surprised at this point as Wii Fit Trainer also shows just the first character version–though, a female in that case. (And has now been confirmed with the Nintendo Direct :P)

So, after thinking of what customs I’d want if any, three immediately came to mind:
-Jigglypuff with her ribbon. I love that customization so much and I wouldn’t play as her any other way so this is just a huge costume option for me.
-Villager – I’d like to make it into the first default female. I’ve had the pink-haired Villager be my character in every AC game without even trying and thus, I’m pretty attached to her. Though, I think making the hairstyle like my actual character since Wild World may be a bit easier than the pink hair:

-Robin – I easily want the robes in the pink option, but like with Villager, I’d prefer the hair for my playable character:
myrobin
Though, it’d be neat if I could ever have something of her with her dress… but in pink:

-And finally, while not needed, it’d be kind of fun to have Pikachu like this:

As for others, the following are all just ones that I’d like to have in alternate costume colors, but not really needed:
amiibocolors
(I also wouldn’t mind a pink Yoshi, but that’s more to just match the pink Yoshi Plush I have)

I’d love to have someone do them (since I know I can’t), but I don’t think I’d ever be comfortable sending my Amiibo off sadly. But yes, Lucina and Robin have been announced for Wave 4 so I’m looking forward to getting both. I also plan to get the Mario Party Peach and Toad as well. While Peach I’d leave alone, I’d like Toad to either look like his Captain-self or even Toadette with her adorable Captain Toad outfit. Kind of more partial to the latter.

As for the Direct itself, not too much actually grabbed my attention. In general, I just have fun watching. Some stuff that did catch my attention though (minus Amiibo as I spoke about them already):
-New Fire Emblem – While I really enjoyed Awakening, I’m not sure if I’d actually enjoy another Fire Emblem or not. There’s a lot of stuff that added to why I liked Awakening would could make or break the new game for me.
-Pokemon Shuffle is pretty much just one of those mobile app games, but I’m still intrigued and may pick it up. I don’t expect to spend any money on it (I’m usually able to resist for mobile-like games)–I do wish it wasn’t like that though. But it’s a free game and looks cute… Just mixed feelings on the amount of turns you have. Those things tend to annoy me a lot :(
-Kirby and the Rainbow Curse is one of those games that makes me so upset because everytime they show something for it, it looks great and gets me more excited but I just can’t play it. I would be pausing the game so much if even being able to finish a level in one go and it just stinks because it looks great. :(
-The Amiibo functions of Mario Party 10 look interesting, but I’m still mixed on the main parts about Mario Party 10 so I don’t know if I’ll pick it up or not.
-Splatoon’s Plaza looks great. I’m still not sure if I will pick up the game just yet and as I’ve mentioned previously, I hate when stats are set through customization. :(
-Etrian Mystery Dungeon actually has me intrigued a bit, but I’m not sure if I will get it.
-Speaking of intriguing things, I have no idea what to think of Project Treasure just yet.

And the biggest thing I’ve seen people upset about… We’re not getting the normal ‘New 3DS’. As I spoke about when they were first announced, I didn’t care for the XL as they are just too big for me (and not my kind of colors) and for the normal, while I found the switching interesting, how much still would not be covered really bothered me. That said, I feel they’ve made better plates as it has gone and it has improved a lot. Regardless, the normal New 3DS has not been announced here which makes me wonder if it’ll ever come over. I think what disappoints me the most personally though is what Nintendo of Europe did with the Ambassador Program is amazing and now it seems we won’t be getting anything similar. And this is the kind of stuff that upsets me about region locking–the complaints would be a lot less if it wasn’t for all these exclusivity between regions along with the preorder bonus differences. It’s ridiculous :( And while I do find most of the cases kind of iffy looking, these upcoming ones in Japan look adorable:
B7UWso3IMAE9SFh

As for stuff I was disappointed weren’t mentioned…:
-No info on Mewtwo
-No info on the next Mario Kart 8 DLC
-Nothing on the cute Collector’s Badge App out in Japan :(

Finally, I will end this with the trailer for the third Style Savvy game that was shown on Nintendo of Japan’s Direct:

I REALLY HOPE THIS COMES OVER. And I still want the update for Style Savvy: Trendsetters! T__T

Captain Toad & LittleBigPlanet 3

While a lot of people tend to get most games for Christmas, I generally get games on release date. It’s rare I pass up on one and usually if I do, there are a variety of reasons such as having too many games to play right now or not having enough information on a key feature (both were factors for LBP3). Regardless, I still ended up getting two games in December–Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker on its release date and Little Big Planet 3 for Christmas from my parents.

I’ll talk about them in order so lets start with Captain Toad! Captain Toad is an amazing puzzle game. The story is rather simple and you don’t really get a choice of characters, but it’s still pretty fun. I’d love if they added in some co-op puzzle DLC where you can play as both Captain Toad and Toadette.

The challenges live up to their name with some easier than others. We managed to get all 3 books done and the challenges for each after quite a while and did most of the Bonus Book until, well, the Mummy stages.

Captain Toad is well worth the money. It easily finds ways to make the levels feel unique and it’s just a lot of fun. The Mummy is my only complaint for the game. It’s essentially like the Cosmic clones from Super Mario Galaxy and I hated those with a passion. I don’t like being chased and it’s one thing where you just need to solve the puzzle–it’s another when you need to get tons of coins. There are SO MANY enemies in the game. The mummy just feels like a waste and it turns a relaxing game into something that is actually kind of frustrating. Right now, we have all but one bonus challenge complete (Getting the coins in the Gold Dragon’s level) and we can’t continue until we finish it and it stinks.

That said, I’m also disappointed that time trials seem to come into play when you finish all the bonuses in the normal level books. I’ve always had issues with Time Trials (I have only one done in Mario Kart 8) and I just… I don’t feel they add anything to this kind of game to be blunt.

The game is still fantastic, but I just hate those two difficulty additions beyond reason :( And I’m not sure we’ll ever get further.

As for Little Big Planet 3… I want to start by saying I loved Little Big Planet. I also really loved Little Big Planet 2. I’m… not enjoying Little Big Planet 3 though. I find the characters interesting enough, but the same magic doesn’t feel there. I don’t care much for the way the worlds work at all, I don’t like the constant switching characters, certain levels are just plain cruel versus challenging (Such as the final two levels–you lose on a later character’s part and run out of lives and need to start all over. Or the final boss which we’re still working on.), and I just… don’t feel attached to it.

It doesn’t help that the transfer procedure was terrible and many of the items aren’t even available yet. I feel that should’ve been good to go before the game released.

I’ve heard people say the game makes up for it in the Creation Mode but I don’t play in the Creation Mode. I’ve never been able to get good enough to do anything I could think up and I just didn’t care to mess with it more. And to be honest, if I’m not enjoying the main point of the game, I don’t see myself caring much to deal with Creation Mode since you kind of have to earn everything from the main game.

And that’s the biggest thing–backtracking feels so much more exaggerated in the game–not to mention just how difficult getting certain things are. I just feel it crosses the line from challenge to cruel and keeps going. A good example is the boss you fight as Toggle–it reminded me a bit of the boss in the Wedding levels in LBP1. We had some issues with it. We definitely went through it a lot. But it was no where near as cruel as Toggle’s level and we had less lives to work with for it.

I also feel so many levels being very character specific kind of takes away from having new characters in the first place with the way LBP works. That said, I do think the side challenges are kind of neat, but I still wish the overall world was better.

I’d really like to complete LBP3, but I’m not sure if I will ever have the motivation to finish it when it just feels more frustrating than anything :(

Anyway, with that said I still have plenty to do with older games. I still need to do a lot more in Smash Brothers for the Wii U, I’m still working on Animal Crossing, and I’m still playing Fantasy Life, Tomodachi Life, and Disney Magical World… Not to mention Pokemon Art Academy and a few other titles.

I’m also looking forward to the Rosalina Amiibo coming out next month. I hope I’ll be able to get one.

Fantasy Life: Finishing Goals

Now, as most of you know I often give myself quite a bit of goals. These last couple of days, I managed to finish up some of the bigger ones in Fantasy Life.

1. Getting every Life to Creator Rank:




2. Finishing the Tower of Light and getting Celestia as a party member:

I still have things I need to do (such as hitting level 200, lots of quests for random people, and making better stuff), but I’m happy to have at least accomplished that.

Tomodachi Life: It’s Christmas Eve!

So, firstly, Happy Christmas Eve everyone! If you do not celebrate Christmas: Seasons Greetings, Happy Holidays, Happy last day of Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa Eve Eve, and Happy Winter Solstice! If you haven’t been playing Tomodachi Life too much, I’d recommend playing today as it is the only time you can buy the Roast Turkey in stores!:

If you buy it once, you’ll always be able to get it at least! Not to mention that the shop clerks will wish you a Happy Holidays and Seasons Greetings as well!

Speaking of the shop clerks… look at how dressed up they all are:

And don’t forget to listen to the festive music they are now playing:

And on the island itself too!:

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!