Editorial and Articles

Blaugust 2024 – The End and What I Learned Week

I kind of let this one really fall off after a strong start. I’ve already kind of touched on the various whys of it all. Mostly just a combination of being busy and the usual lack of motivation. I can’t say I learned anything new that varies from last year’s wrap up. I wish I could be more positive. I’m still pining for the days of old I guess.

Which also may be part of why I’m so jaded. I’ve been blogging for a long time. Like, a really long time. Since before Live Journal was a thing really, though it wasn’t really a “blog platform” just a bunch of hand-coded HTML files on Geocities.

I’ve probably talked about this one before too. When you get old you tend to ramble and repeat the same stories over and over I guess. There wasn’t even really a word for it, it was just “your website.” But I had found other sites doing dated updates and did that myself as well. In the end, all of my other hobbies, feed down to my one true hobby, which is writing. I’d like to think I’m good at it, but I’m probably not.

I love that meme. It’s my favorite meme ever. It really is, and trust me, I’ve seen sooooo many memes, and have a stupid useless archive of tons of random memes on a shared network drive. I don’t know why, but it’s there.

Anyway, this is starting to get rambly and turn into a Blogging Intensifies post and not really a Lameazoid post. It’s all SRS BNS over here on Lameazoid.com. None of this personal journaling style rambling on this blog, no sir.

My Gaming Journey – Part 3 – 32/64bit Era

Aug 18th, 2024

by Ramen Junkie.

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This era of gaming is where things started to get a little more varied. This would essentially be the Playstation/Saturn/N64 era of gaming. Though I am not sure I have ever even seen a Saturn, much less played one. Playstation definitely dominated this era of games, but for my part, I stuck with Nintendo. I also started really pushing into PC gaming as well, but I covered all my PC history last year.

The Nintendo 64 was the first console I bought with my own money. I was working by this time, and had plenty of free flowing cash. I forget exactly which store I bought it from, but I can say I got a branded carry bad for free when I bought it. The first game I got for it was Cruisin’ USA. I had been playing a lot of Cruisin’ USA at the arcade and wanted to be able to play it at home too, which I did, a lot.

I imagine the system also included Mario 64. Some of the notable titles I remember really enjoying for the N64 included

Cruisin’ USA
Mario 64
Mario Kart 64
Mischief Makers
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Goldeneye

Man, Goldeneye was such a great classic game. It looks pretty janky these days with its blocky polygons, but it was so fun both single player and multi player.

But more notable maybe is Mischief Makers. I played the original, and it’s probably my favorite game on the system, but later I picked up a Japanese copy for fairly cheap while off at college along with a Japanese Dance Dance Revolution Disney Mix. These are notable if only because they were the first time I actually “modded” a console in any way. Granted, it’s an easy mod. Nintendo games are region free, but the carts are shaped differently. The US consoles have these notches inside to prevent inserting Japanese carts. I could modify the carts, or modify the system, since I had two cartridges, it made sense to just chop the tabs out of the slot in the system.

I also wrote a GameFAQs FAQ for that Disney Mix game, it may still be the only FAQ for that game.

I don’t remember owning a PS1 until later, I want to say I did most of my Playstation 1 gaming on the PS2, which I will get to next post. My friend had a Playstation though, so we played it some there. Most notably, there was a weekend where I borrowed it though, he was out of town, my parents and brother were out of town, I had the whole place to myself, because I had to work. But when I wasn’t at work, I played through a very large chunk of Final Fantasy VII.

I didn’t have time to finish it sadly, not on the Playstation. Eventually I got a copy for the PC, and played through it there. In case you are unaware, Final Fantasy VII is highly regulated by gamers as one of the greatest games ever made. And it definitely had me hooked.

I am sure I played a lot of other PS1 titles, but I can’t really remember many besides Metal Gear Solid and Mega Man Legends. I kind of just skipped the PS1 Generation in a way, though I did play catch up a bit later.

Unfortunately for Nintendo, this would be the last console I would own from them for a while. I got way more into PC gaming and went with the PS2 and Dreamcast during the follow up generation, but that’s for next week’s post.

Whoops, I Dropped the Blaugust Ball

Aug 15th, 2024

by Ramen Junkie.

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I’m skipping “Creator Appreciation Week” here for “Staying Motivated Week.” There are no rules anyway, you can’t stop me. Apparently I dropped the balloon Blaugust and have missed days.

Which is fine, really. I mean it’s 100% fine.

I never intended to “post every day” to start with, it just sort of, started happening. My first “miss” was Saturday, which was a “What I’ve been playing” post. These are basically the only posts I can’t pre write, and I was busy Saturday and tired, so I just, didn’t. Plus it was just, “More Overwatch and Sky.” My wife and daughter are working on opening a shop so we spent all day moving shit for that and I was exhausted.

The next “miss” was Monday, which is a bigger annoyance because, I have that post written, I just needed to pull some images online and post it. It was supposed to be Lower Decks for my little “Star Trek Write Ups” series.

It’s probably for the best, I don’t have one really for next week anyway. I have some notes from when I watched The TOS Animated series a while back, but I am not sure I can pull that into a post with a mild refresher.

As I pre write THIS post, I am reminded that I also have Tuesdays post written, for Transformers Tuesday, but it needs some photos. And Wednesday kind of has photos, but needs written.

So instead I am doing this post, for Thursday (I mean, “Today”), because it’s just an easy rambling thoughts write up.

It also just, doesn’t help that lately I have been feeling unmotivated in general again. It comes and goes, though the motivation in general tends to be in spurts with long lulls in between. It’s annoying and frustrating.

My Gaming Journey – Part 2 – 16bit Era and the Game Boy

Aug 11th, 2024

by Ramen Junkie.

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The natural progression from the NES of course was right into the SNES. I think the SNES may still be my favorite console, mostly for the graphics. There is such a perfect simplicity to the sprits of the SNES. It was just enough power and memory to make larger complex titles, but not overly complicate them. I enjoy modern pixel graphics games, but they are always much higher resolution with so many more colors. It’s just not the same. After the SNES, consoles became much more about polygons and 3D graphics.

In case you didn’t catch it, I had a SNES growing up. My friends had a SNES, one had a Genesis, but we were all basically cemented in as “Nintendo people” at this point. The SNES somehow ended up being a different experience as well, less multi player gaming and more solo playing together. We did play multiplayer titles, Super Street Fighter 2 was one for sure, and of course Mario Kart. Everyone loved Mario Kart.

But a lot was solo gaming. The SNES was also when I started really getting into RPGs. The SNES had so many good RPGs, and specifically, the Final Fantasy series. I’ve probably played through Final Fantasy 2(IV) and 3(VI) a dozen times or more. It was everything I loved of the first game on the NES, except the stories were so much more. It’s a love that would continue on for a long while.

I wasn’t only a SNES person though, my grandparents had a Sega Genesis for us to play when we visited, which was fairly often despite that we lived 2 States and an 8-hour drive away. We didn’t have as many games for the Genesis but I absolutely loved Sonic 2 and Aladdin. Eventually, I did get a Genesis for our house though as well, or maybe we just somehow ended up with the one from my grandparents. It never quite dominated my game-playing like the SNES did. It always felt a little off graphically I think, like everything with just kind of “dirtier” somehow. The SNES was a crisp cartoon world, the Genesis felt like it was trying to reproduce a real environment but ugly.

It’s probably worth noting, even though it’s not a 16 bit console, I also had a Game Boy around this time period. I think the Game Boy was just as played as the SNES. I’ve always been really partial to handheld consoles for sure. I had the gigantic HandyBoy attachment that would split out into a big mess of speakers with a magnification screen. I think it was bigger than the Game Boy itself. My brother had one too, I think part of why we got them was to keep us busy on car rides when traveling, which we did fairly often. My parents liked to go to my grandparent’s home, and we went camping a lot.

Final Fantasy was a big favorite on the Gameboy as well, with the Final Fantasy Legend series, though I would later learn these were technically part of another series called Saga. There was also a lot of Tetris too. I got really good at Tetris in the early 90s.

Who Am I, What is Lameazoid?

Aug 8th, 2024

by Ramen Junkie.

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Part of Blaugust involves some, optional prompts, and one is an introduction post. This is one I have done before many times and it’s probably mostly all there on the About page linked above. But I’ll recap a bit here for those just joining in.

Welcome to Lameazoid, my first blog that I keep dragging along behind me. When it began life on Geocities it was The Chaos Zone but I did a sort of rebrand when I moved to Livejournal in the early 2000s. It’s technically all the same.blog, though I have purg d and restored content on it probably a dozen times. The name was sort of a retro inspired riff on not being cool, inspired in part by the name Freakazoid.

Last year I did Blaugust on my other blog, [Blogging Intensifies]. Where [BI] is about my “nerd content” about programming, gardening, food, and music, Lameazoid is all about my “geek hobbies”, my toy collecting, my game playing, my TV/movie watching. Though there was a brief period where the Toy content was on its own blog called Ready Set Geek.

I am your host for this month on this blog, Josh Miller, aka Ramen Junkie. Ramen Junkie is a name I have used for ages now, I like to joke that I have been known as Ramen Junkie for more of my life than I have not been known as Ramen Junkie. It’s a name I started using back in the late 90s on Use etc, primarily alt.games.final-fantasy, which I am the duly elected “Supreme Dictator For Life.” Whatever that means, I honestly don’t even remember if I actually won that “election”, it’s just a dumb meme at this point.

The name was picked for several reasons, I like ramen noodles, at the time I was a poor college student and ramen was poor college student food, also, ramen noodles are “hacker food”. I also picked it to poke fun at the common Usenet trope of people using Japanese Anime names as handles.

Anyway, welcome to the blog.