my things

computer games

although i'm mainly a console gamer, some of my earliest memories of playing video games was playing on the family computer. the games i remember most vividly are barbie horse adventures: mystery ride and spongebob squarepants: employee of the month. i don't even know if i ever properly beat either of these games, because i can't remember how either of them end despite playing both like dozens of times haha. i like to think that the barbie game was the start of my horse girl days as a child, predating even my howrse era. when it comes to the spongebob game, i remember always getting stuck in that rock bottom level. in my imagination i always thought of that game as a horror game; there's just something about the game that i find so unsettling. to be honest i thought i hallucinated the game until one day youtube recommended this video to me. i was surprised how much of the game i recognized, even if i didn't remember the plot at all. i even recognized the final level, so maybe i did beat the game? when i was a bit older (aka 7) i saw a copy of the sims in my dad's office. one day when i was home and he was at work, i crept into his office to steal it and install it on the shared computer. even though i tried to play when he wasn't there, he obviously still found out when he needed to do some maintenance on the computer. he didn't even get mad at me, just thought it was funny.

playstation one

when i was really young, like 4 or 5 i think? my dad bought a playstation one for me and my brother. we got the round redesigned version, which was bundled with an lcd screen. i actually didn't know that there were other versions until i was in high school and saw the original, sharp cornered design without a screen - i thought the one i had was the same kind everyone had when they mentioned psones lmao. i still have it and it works just fine, if not a little yellowed. the earliest games i remember playing were the crash bandicoot games. i think the christmas my brother and i got it we also got the crash bandicoot collector's collection that came with crash bash, crash team racing, and crash bandicoot: warped. my brother and i would play that racing game for hours on end, and we didn't have a tv to connect the psone to so we had to play hunched over that little 5 inch screen. i also vividly remember a bug's life and thinking that game was so damn hard lmao. i don't think my brain will ever forget dave foley's voice as flik going “oop!” and “ugh!” from all the times i died to the bugs in that game.

when i was a kid my mom and i loved to go to garage sales. when i was 8 or so i came across a copy of final fantasy viii while digging through a bin of movies at one. i was so enchanted just flipping through the manual; i had no idea that games could have, like, characters and a story lmao. and my birthday was only one day off from the main character! so i knew i had to ask my mom to buy it for me. luckily when i got home and tested it the discs still worked and i spent that whole summer playing the game. i didn't really understand a lot of how it worked though so i think this was the first game i ever ended up going online to look for a guide for. i didn't have a computer in my room though so i printed off like 20 pages from some gamefaqs guide. this game was the start of my life long love of jrpgs and japanese media in general, even if that adel boss beat my ass like 564236755 times haha.

playstation two

for christmas when i was eight my brother and i got a playstation two. for some reason my dad bought a copy of jak and daxter: combat racing for us and, given our love of racing games, my brother and i played the hell out of that game. we did eventually play the first three games in the series too, but i will always be particularly fond of the racing game. we also played the one that came out later, the lost frontier i think it's called? and we both HATED that game lol. i think that was the first time we had been so let down by a game.

one day when i was at the library i saw a copy of kingdom hearts ii. back then you could check out video games at my local library for one week. i didn't get very far before i had to return it, but i did get far enough to play through the entire intro sequence as roxas and then be confused as hell when the POV switched to sora. when i eventually found a copy at half price books and could finish the game i never really stopped being confused about the plot even though the gameplay was extremely fun. probably because i hadn't played the first game at the time. i did manage to get my hands on a copy of the first game a couple of months later, although i never did lose my bias for roxas.

i still have my ps2, although the laser has died. while i mainly emulate ps2 games on my pc now (so many ps2 rpgs are so much more playable with a fast forward button...), i have a freemcboot and a mx4sio card so i can play game backups without needing a disc whenever i want to use a real ps2. with a slim model it takes up little space, and is actually quite a nice set up if you ever travel places with old tvs that still have component input, like a friend's cabin or something.

ds

for my tenth birthday i got a matte black and red ds lite, and my brother got the matte black and blue one. we played mario kart and mario party together all the time. my brother got really into them, even bringing his ds to school to play in class. my favorite game was the legend of zelda: phantom hourglass. my dad also bought the official guidebook, and i used it so much the binding fell apart. these days i mainly play ds games on my 3ds for convenience's sake or sometimes even emulate when i want to be able to fast forward, but i still pull it out from time to time. one of the hinges broke, so i swapped the shell.

wii

for christmas when i was ten my brother and i got a nintendo wii. looking back on it now it feels more like i got a wii for christmas since my brother barely played it. i probably spent hundreds of hours playing the legend of zelda: twilight princess. i used to listen to taylor swift's debut album and fearless constantly when playing, except for when i was in the desert area and put on my chemical romance's three cheers for sweet revenge. i played that game and those albums so much my brother learned all the lyrics despite not liking either musician. when i was 13 and skyward sword came out i begged my dad to buy it for me for christmas. he did, but he didn't buy the motion plus attachment you needed to play the game. i didn't want him to feel bad about it so i ended up asking my mom to buy it for me afterwards. turns out i didn't even end up liking the game – while the motion controls in twilight princess were fun and engaging to me, the increased precision required in skyward sword just made playing frustrating.

computer games pt. 2 and mobile

the wii was the last console i got until i was in college. most of my gaming experience throughout middle school, high school, and early college consisted of me buying used games for these consoles i already had and playing them, even as the world moved onto the seventh and eighth generation of consoles. but when i entered college and bought my first laptop, i managed to get skyrim running on it. even though my computer was definitely NOT a gaming laptop and didn't even have a dedicated graphics card, i still managed to put 300 hours into the game. it was the first game where i could do things like sneak, steal, archery, and all these other things that blew me away at the time. that year i also got really obsessed with mystic messenger, a mobile otome game. those first couple months it was out it felt like everyone on animanga tumblr was playing that game, and i ended up getting sucked into it too. i mean i would wake up in the middle of the night to make chats, read it by myself in the dorm cafeteria while my friends would hang out with each other... i think that game remains my unhealthiest obsession to date lmao

playstation four

my ps4 was the first new (to me) console i got in like… ten years? i bought a used slim model in late 2018 when i was in college, after working part time for awhile. i was blown away by the graphics, especially since i completely missed the ps3 era of games. one of the first games i got was the witcher 3 and i ended up loving it enough to read the entire book series. when i bought the game i had no idea there was any nudity or sex in the game; at the time i had two roommates and had my ps4 set up in the living room, and when i first booted up the game one of them was there with me. we were both shocked that they had bare ass and boobs in the first scene of the game and my roommate accused me of being a perv lmao. after that i closed the blinds whenever i played so other apartments in the complex couldn't see in case any more nudity blindsided me. i also played final fantasy xv after the last dlc came out in early 2019. i had heard bad things about the game, but since i was a huge final fantasy fan i still wanted to play it. it actually became one of my favorites, and i think waiting to play it with all the dlc and story updates helped. in 2021 i bought yakuza 0 on a whim and ended up spending the next half year playing through the entire yakuza series, which dethroned final fantasy in becoming my favorite video game series. i now call my ps4 my yakuza machine now since i always keep all the games installed on it.

3ds

in 2020, before the pandemic, i bought a black and turquoise new 2ds xl. i ended up loving the megami tensei games that were on here − i think that dual screens are a perfect fit for turn-based rpgs. i also played through the entire ace attorney series too, included the miles edgeworth games for the ds. this was the first console i ever hacked too. did you know that the “new” 3ds consoles can emulate ps1 games? i actually played through the entirety of persona 2: eternal punishment on my n2dxl. the performance wasn't great and i'm not entirely sure i'd recommend it to anyone, but you can do it! honestly it made me wish more ps1 megaten games got 3ds ports like soul hackers did, having a map on the bottom screen is perfect for those older games.

i bought a 2ds because i got a good deal on it and thought i wouldn't care about 3d, but last year i changed my mind and bought a pearl white new 3ds ll (japanese version of the xl). i bought one from japan with yellowing on the bottom screen, that i decided i could replace and customize the buttons at the same time. this was after i had shell swapped my switch and ds lite so i thought i had enough experience to do it – i did not lmao. okay i mean i DID do it, but it was a massive, massive, MASSIVE pain in the ass compared to those other two consoles. i thought the ribbon cable through the hinge on the ds was bad enough, but the 3ds has THREE. and getting all the connections secure so the damn thing would turn on was honestly a nightmare… if you're a newb at messing with electronics like i am, i definitely do NOT recommend opening up the 3ds. or at least changing the screens and d-pad − iirc you don't have to remove the motherboard to change the other buttons. that said here's my 3ds, it has all pink buttons and i think looks pretty cute?! there aren't really aftermarket parts for the 3ds in custom colors other than for the circle pad and c-stick, so i used a ds lite d-pad, psp 1000 cap for the c-stick, and aftermarket switch buttons for the rest.

switch

this is the newest console in my collection! i shell swapped it (and my ds lite) with transparent shells from eXtremeRate, both in glacier blue. they only have the faintest hint of blue though, but i personally like that. the switch shell swap was honestly really easy but the ds was definitely a bigger pain in the ass.

when i bought it i was still deciding between buying a switch or a vita for hacking. all vitas are hackable and they're a bit cheaper, but the switch had a bigger library of games i wanted to play, so i had a hard time choosing. then one day when i was browsing craigslist i saw someone selling a used switch for $120, which they said they bought on launch day. in case you're unfamiliar with switch hacking, only early models of the switch are “unpatched” and vulnerable to an exploit that lets you soft mod the switch. i asked for the serial number and luckily it was an unpatched model, so i just bought it figuring i probably wouldn't be able to find a better deal on an unpatched switch and can always buy a vita when i want one. i've had a lot of fun messing with my console, and it's now my main emulation device. you can also overclock games, which was a lifesaver when i played shin megami tensei v, and mod them too – i have a thai mod of stardew valley on there.

stuff i've made

i first learned to cross stitch when i was a kid, although i never really got into it as a hobby. and then one day, after being obsessed with the yakuza series for like a year and a half and wanting some merch but being broke, i had the idea to cross stitch the sprites of the yakuza 7 party members that appear on the loading screens onto a blank gray gildan sweater i already owned. i still had a huge bag of DMC floss my mom thrifted when i was a kid, so after spending a whole week organizing floss and figuring out how to convert pixel art to a cross stitch pattern in floss cross, i sat down to relearn how to cross stitch. i honestly think it came out pretty nice, although i rarely wear it for fear of staining the sweater. i will say that i do NOT recommend cross stitching on clothing for your first project; when i did my next project i was so shocked how much easier it is to put your needle through the correct hole when you use aida lmao

i also learned how to crochet in order to make my own yakuza merch. this bun-chan and koro-nyan are the first things i ever crocheted beyond swatches and face scrubs. the bun-chan is from this pattern, and i free handed the koro-nyan. frankly they're not very well made, i think i used too big of a hook and my koro-nyan is starting to fall apart. these pics are from when they were fresh off the hook in late 2022 since they look a little sad now haha.