Kohaku

Hey, all! I'm still alive and kicking! I hope you are all doing well as I know it's been a long time since my last visit. Life has been uh... or I guess continued to be crazy? But things are mostly pretty good right now, there is still a lot that could be better but I'm still here and trying to move forward. My last entry was 2019... so a lot has happened. I'm back in my house thankfully. It's not perfect but it's livable so that's a good thing. Housing was questionable for awhile from hotel to RV to another rental. I'm a manager at a pharmacy so that's unexpected and I guess interesting. On April 4, 2021 my father passed away so that's been tough especially as we just passed the two year anniversary of that so Tuesday was a hard day. But I met more new friends and people I care about and twoish weeks ago we hung out for the first time and that was some fun that I found was sorely needed as I haven't done something like that in a long time. There have been ups and downs as that's life. Lately though I've been streaming on Twitch! I've recently become a Twitch Affiliate and early in the year streamed some Lego Building. And on Saturday I am going to be building a few sets on stream at 1pm ET! We're building: 40581 BIONICLE Tahu and Taku 40516 Everyone is Awesome ... And a couple more but one of them is unofficial... but for Bionicle fans of 2004 should be very familiar. There is a whole tweet that announces it and hints at it right here. I also plan to giveaway a few small sets I have during the stream. (It's nothing too huge but it's still free Lego.) I also stream video games with a lot of friends. So if you like that kind of thing feel free to check it out. If you feel like joining the Lego stream will be at 1pm over on my Twitch channel! And I'll try not to be a stranger.

Would I lie to you?

Stop screaming at me I'm getting old. Also Mimikyu is still the best pokemons

Holy heck you're still alive too! It's been ages!

I disappear for a few years and the whole website changes. Why do you do this to me? But in reality life has uhhhh really freaking sucked. Still recovering from freaking hurricane freaking sandy in 2012. We had a contractor steal $60,000 this year. So that messed everything up. Here is a tumblr post from before we had that stolen that sums up everything from 2012 to the start of this year. It's insane. At this point right now we are in an RV park that closes in like two weeks with no where to go so might be homeless unless there is a miracle or we find something. How have you all been? (I can't promise I'll post much but I have wanted to make an I'm alive post for awhile.)

Okay, I always enjoy some good cute romance. I'm known to enjoy some cute characters being cute together. Although I also like a lot of plot and having the romance be a part of it rather than a driving factor. So here is a short list from me: Sarazanmai, fairly new not as much romance in the anime as the prequel manga but has a lot of focus on connections. Love Stage!!, two cuties fall for each other after doing an ad shoot, they originally did it as kids and were requested to do it again. Yuri!!! on Ice, love blooms on the ice between figure skaters. Gravitation, an older one between an aspiring cutie trying to form a signing career and a novelist as they gravitate towards each other. No.6, members of a perfect city-state/utopia find out it isn't as perfect as they thought. Shin Sekai Yori, a bit darker as people with psychic abilities led to the end of the world. No romance until about half way though. There are probably more that I've seen that I am just not remembering right now.

You cannot escape.

I posted this on my various social media accounts earlier but I am going to talk about it here too. As many of you know I talked about our cat, Pickles quite a bit. So it is with a heavy heart that I must say that she passed away yesterday morning. RIP Pickles. Love you, Pickles.

I see the conversation going like this: Bionicle fan: "Hey, do you remember Bionicle?" Sayger: "Bionicle? Man, that takes me back. Those things were hard to draw!" I actually chatted with him for a bit 5 years ago (has it really been that long?) at NYCC. He was a pretty awesome guy and had Bionicle comics at his booth for purchase and signing. If you do get a chance I do recommend saying hi!

Go for it!

So at some point I plan to stream some Super Mario Maker. I don't know when just yet... but I want you to send me Super Mario Maker stages here! At some point I will play them on a stream coming up!

When you will forever be a Nintendo fan.

Thanks! I would love to have you! It's by no means perfect and I'm still learning but it is a lot of fun. I definitely do want to do view battles and stuff along those lines. Such as both Smash Bros. and Mario Kart. I think having view interaction like that would be a ton of fun I just still have to figure out how I want to plan it out and do it. They would still get uploaded to YouTube as I do like archiving the streams for others namely because Twitch doesn't keep them for long.

So, this month has been good for me on twitch and I am still planning on doing more as we go forward. I've been doing a lot of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD. I've been archiving them to YouTube here. I will say we do try to keep things PG, but the occasional thing may slip through. So please check it out though! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlESMZrnKEg&list=PL_Sf7EFHuTUjucHSOy7TF1iXwQcKUCK_2 What might interest some of you more though is stuff like multiplayer Smash Bros. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvZA5XgRs7A I am still planning to do some Bionicle stuff, I will be relaunching the poll on it as I did actually find the missing game that was not on the poll. I do need to test them first and make sure I can stream them as well as make a layout as having a GBA game be full screen would look terrible. The banner at the start of the post was made by me, the art however was drawn by my friend, @Cammiluna. I had commissioned it for a project a long time ago and well that project didn't pan out, so I am happy to reuse it for something productive. She drew the art, but I put the banner together. When I go live though I do post it on my twitter and I have been using my twitter more than I used to. It's @konekokohaku

After all the time I spent with Metroid Prime Hunters I think Federation Force looks fun, I am excited to play co-op with friends. The Prime series is honestly my favorite part of Metroid and this might open the series up to new fans. I think Federation Force will be a lot of fun and could have some good challenge with co-op.

I know that I haven't visited here too much lately, but I would like to change that. I can't make too many promises but hopefully more than a few times a year. One of my plans will help with that, as you will see I've updated and fixed a bunch of broken images. While doing that a few were added, like my Tumblr and my Twitch links. I'm still new to the whole streaming thing, and I'm still working on getting things set up and optimized. However... I have had a plan for a very long time. And that is to stream the Bionicle games. I have a few of them: Lego Bionicle: Tales of the Tohunga - GBA - 2001 - (This game is considered canon with the G1 storyline) Bionicle: Matoran Adventures - GBA - 2002 Bionicle: The Game - GCN - 2003 Bionicle: The Game - GBA - 2003 Bionicle Heroes - Wii - 2007 I also have Bionicle: Maze of Shadows which is currently either in Wisconsin or in storage with stuff that survived Hurricane Sandy. In addition, I do have Bionicle Heroes for the DS, but as I do not have a 3DS with a capture card I can't really play that one for all of you. Basically, I want you to choose which game I start with. (If I locate Maze of Shadows it will be added into a future poll.) You can vote right here. The time and date for these streams hasn't been decided yet but I will make a post and let everyone know at least a week in advance.

So Super Mario Maker just came out a few days ago, and I've got to say it is a lot of fun so far. Both playing creative levels and making them. I've really only gone through about half of my ideas regarding levels... and I am constantly adding more. I thought I would share some of the ideas I've already shared on my tumblr here. This stage is the battleship Halberd from the Kirby series. You adventure over it, past the Combo Canon and even fight a few bosses.This is currently my most popular stage, and I'm pretty dang proud of it. Course ID: 1071-0000-002C-2041 If you do not have Super Mario Maker and are curious you can see the stage here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2l-23dhxEY Next up we have Ashley's Spooky Mansion: Who's the girl next door living in the haunted mansion? This stage takes you through Ashley's Song. The course ID is: 0023-0000-0035-50D5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u_76yAC5cc For those of you who have the game you can see these stages and more. I have 13 stages up so far, so I will share a few more very soon. I do post them under my Super Mario Maker tag on tumblr first. I just posted one a short while ago too.

When it comes to video games, a lot of gamers don't like to justify 10 hours of content for $60. Especially when one is on a budget.

Where are you getting that statistic? Because that... seems really unlikely to me. As I understand it, the starter pack gives you 14 levels and three adventure worlds, whereas the level packs each give you one bonus level and one adventure world. There are 14 story levels, 6 bonus levels, and 14 adventure worlds in all. Even if you treat the adventure worlds and bonus levels as equivalent to regular levels (and I haven't seen enough to know whether this is a fair comparison) that just makes 34 levels total, half of which are in the starter pack. Okay, so I may have missed the amount of levels. However... you just proved my point regardless.It makes the level packs that much more expensive. Especially now that half of the game costs $179.94. Even if it is just bonus content... that is very expensive bonus content. Day one DLC and having content on disc like that are horrible business practices. This is something Ido not support at all. I understand how much it costs to make games. However, they are pretty much price gouging(maybe not as extreme) as I can guarantee you that Lego is selling it all at a good profit. This is taking into account how much the retailers and everyone else gets. I believe it has been said that there is only about 7 hours of content for the story. $100 for 7 hours. Lego's prices used to be a lot better. You got more for your money. I do understand that the economy has changed especially for the company. However, the economy has also changed for the family and parents buying this stuff. Especially with such low minimum wages and high costs of living. If Lego Dimensions does have price cuts, I do think that will take out some of the initial costs for consumers. However, Lego rarely gets price cuts except when they are changing the stock at stores and the holiday sales.

For LEGO Dimensions, that's not true at all. All of the story levels are included in the starter pack by default, and you do not need any additional packs to complete them. Level packs unlock "bonus levels" (for instance, you can play Portal levels with just the starter pack, but the Portal Level Pack unlocks additional Portal-inspired test chambers, and the Midway Arcade level pack unlocks an arcade level with a bunch of playable "minigames"). And any figure from any franchise can unlock an "adventure world" (sort of an open-world "free play" area inspired by that franchise). Technically, with just ONE pack from each individual franchise (including the level packs for the franchises that feature them) you will have access to every story level, every bonus level, and every adventure world. The only reason to get EVERY pack is if you want every character and vehicle, same as with any other toys-to-life game. In past LEGO games, you DID need to unlock a lot of different characters to get "100% completion" in the story levels, as there were a lot of things only certain characters could do. LEGO Dimensions actually seems to be assigning specific abilities to specific characters a lot less. Instead, many powers are unlocked via the starter pack's Toy Pad functions, like the "Scale" function that makes your character larger or smaller or the "Elemental" function that gives your character elemental attacks. So instead of needing to unlock a smaller character to get through small spaces, you can literally just make your three starting characters smaller or larger. There might still be character-specific obstacles I'm not aware of, though. Besides that, part of the reason the individual packs are so expensive is that unlike many other Toys-to-Life games, they're not just static figurines. They're actual, buildable LEGO toys. So while they might be more expensive per figure than other toys-to-life packs (and not by all that much, all things considered), you're getting a lot more value for your money on the "toy" side of things. And yeah, as Lyi says, LEGO Dimensions is doing one thing a lot better than its toys-to-life competitors: every single pack will be compatible with the original starter pack. They've made a point of advertising this. You won't have to buy a brand-new starter pack every year to use that year's new figure packs, as opposed to Skylanders and Disney Infinity which regularly release figures that only work with that year's starter pack. The upfront cost of the starter pack is higher, yes, but you won't have to worry about your starter pack becoming obsolete each year. It may have all of the required story levels with the game, but those bonus levels are a huge amount of content. I find it disappointing that the game itself has less content then the bonus level packs. Technically that adds up to $279.93. For just the level content alone. Keeping in mind there is a good chance most of the initial stuff is on the disc just waiting to be unlocked. That isn't really a qualm of mine. I do think the content is pretty awesome within the game. The problem with this argument is the cost of Lego. Those $15 packs have a small vehicle, a minifig, and the NFC chips. It's a small amount compared to the size of other figures. And in most cases this is more expensive than other figures. They may be better as toys, but they are more expensive toys. By a lot. From here: The disc only release is only in Europe (which is dumb and something I wasn't aware of until reading this) but it is an option that is available for some customers. However you can download the game on the various system shops. Which means it is compatible with the previous Disney Infinity Base. Which also means as the game is already out that Disney incorporated backwards compatibility first. Or in this case forwards compatibility.

I'm not saying the fun or character packs are needed to be able to enjoy the game. Even if the three worlds in the starter pack is the main campaign, there are still six worlds that you need level packs for. That is more than double the content than what the base game offers.For an additional $180. The thing that bugs me most is that this content is likely going to be on the disc already. As for not needing a new starter pack that's true of even the new Disney Infinity 3.0 line. However, you can bet they will offer future starter packs likely with exclusive character. People buy it.Skylanders proved it as did Disney Infinity. Not to mention there is no way to ensure that they are future proof for the next generation of systems. I fully agree. Skylanders is guilty of having level packs too, but they still give you more or less a full game.

Now... before I start off let me just say that Lego Dimensions looks absolutely fantastic and I really want to like this game. I honestly do. It looks witty and funny. But... they aren't selling you a complete game. Why? Because the model works. Look at Activision's Skylanders series and Disney's Infinity series. But with Skylanders you don't need every figure to be able to play and enjoy the games. The figures add do the series and you do need some level packs for additional content but you are still getting a full game. Disney infinity however... uses the same model as Lego Dimensions does. If you want to play all the levels... you need the figures. Or at the very least the playsets that unlock the content. The problem I have is Lego Dimensions is really trying to get that cash from everyone. If you add up the cost of the starter pack, the level packs, the team packs, and the character packs it comes to an incredible $784.62. (If you are curious about my calculations you can see them all here in a google doc. All prices are USD and before tax.) But Kohaku, they aren't releasing all of this at the same time and the game has stuff with the $99.99 starter pack. Ahhh but the starter pack only has three worlds. If you want to experience the entire story that the game has to offer you need the level packs. Those will run you a total of $179.94. It adds up very fast. Now let's say you want different characters and teams, then you you have to pay $24.99 for those team packs. The level packs themselves cost $29.99! Team packs are $5 cheaper but offer a lot less content for your money. Now add in the fun packs at $14.99 each which have one character and one gadget/vehicle and the price really shoots up. Those fun packs add up to a whopping $404.73. Let's face it the fun packs are basically just character packs. Now I know not every one is going to get every single one. But this is just glorified DLC... except the content is already on the disc. You just can't access it without buying these expensive character packs. My point is to be able to make the most out of Lego Dimensions you need to throw down a lot of money. (As we all know I have little money to throw down.) And the way that they do it I really don't like. I don't like this as a Lego fan or as a gamer. Lego may be a very profitable company right now, but some of their decisions... I really don't care for lately. This being the largest of them. Remember that price of $784.62. It is currently cheaper to buy every character in the Smash Bros. line up at MSRP (now I am including unreleased ones, but Nintendo has said every character including DLC like Lucas and Ryu is getting an amiibo.) That cost is $714.45. And those amiibo all work in multiple games across the Wii U and New 3DS platforms. Also for the most part they look really good and are even suitable to be put on display. The Minifigs from Lego Dimensions... I can see that stuff all getting lost very easily. Especially as they are aimed at kids. Sorry little Timmy, but we can't afford to get you that character pack again. It's just too expensive. Now I should note that they have said they plan to update it yearly. But to get that content even after they update the game... guess what you are going to need to buy? More level packs, team packs and you guessed it some more character packs. I really wanted to like Lego Dimensions... but right now I hate the model they went with. And honestly... with Skylanders, Disney Infinity, Amiibo, and now Lego Dimensions... the Toys to Life market is becoming crowded. I do think someone is going to crash and burn much like things did years ago with Guitar Hero and Rockband. Too much of the same idea will lead to lower profits for all of these companies. It is very hard for a newcomer into the market. Lego Dimensions does have a great marketing team, but Skylanders, Disney Infinity and Nintendo's Amiibo have all proven themselves. They all print money. But if I had to predict a company having issues with profitability it would be Lego followed by Disney Infinity. These two companies seem to be the ones that are milking their fans the most. But Kohaku, what about Amiibo and Skylanders? Amiibo are from Nintendo. They've been a massive success and Nintendo can't keep up with demand. Skylanders you also get a full game. They also have Nintendo's support with the Bowser and Donkey Kong figures that will be compatible with both Skylanders(only on Nintendo systems though, sorry, Microsoft and Sony) and Amiibo. Sorry Lego, but as good as Lego Dimensions looks... I'm going to be giving it a pass. (I do also plan to have another entry up later about Super Mario Maker. It might happen tonight or tomorrow.)

Hey everyone! I figured I would give you all a little update on how I've been doing since whenever the heck my last entry was. I still pop in every once in awhile and look around/read the news. (Please update the front page. It gets older by the day and is well past it's prime.) Anyway, I'll start with the good news. I'm still alive. Sometimes I do wonder how, there have still been so many ups and downs since Hurricane Sandy in 2012. I did manage to pick up all of the new Toa. i only paid full price for Kopaka and that was near the start of the year. The others... I got lucky with at Sears. They kept giving me points so I managed to get them all for very cheap. As in around $20 cheap. I haven't picked up any other Lego besides Bionicle... and to be honest Lego just doesn't seem like a good value to me anymore... although I don't really have disposable income anymore. Splatoon is a lot of fun. Have some decepticon propaganda. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJtFaGUShKo So, now for the bad news. We still are not back home. We are still dealing with New York Rising and suing the insurance company. Things are going good with the litigation as the insurance company is one of the ones that sent unlicensed engineers, such as the one they sent to us. One of the thing we are trying to get them to pay for is attorney fees, otherwise we loose a huge amount of money to our lawyers. Money that we need to build the house. In the meantime we are continuing to pay for a place we can't live and for the rent here. The rent prices are crazy and we have a cheaper place. As for this past week, we've been there mowing and weed wacking for 4 days. It isn't as easy as you would think as we have to maneuver around a condemned house that is off of its foundation. The town gave us a notice about them and has been super picky. honestly though it feels kinda shady with how picky he is being, but we have to do it. It was also my first time ever using a lawnmower... it was terrifying. And it sucks doing it to make it so freaking perfect. Not only did we have to rent a lawnmower (keep in mind our original one is still under a house) we had to buy a new weed wacker plus the plastic string they use to cut and that all set us back over $100 so far. ;_; Hopefully things will look up soon though... I don't think I can take much more of this... especially as we are coming up on the three year anniversary of the storm and we still aren't home. :/ Anyway... I'll try to pop in a little bit more... I've wanted to make a post for ages here but I just haven't really had the time.

I'll bite and totally would like in.

For the Onua Gen 1 plastic mask I can provide more pictures if they are wanted/needed/if anyone is curious. I actually have it on my wall right now.