Photos: Momo-con 2017

[2020 note] This is more or less lost content that I never made a post about from 2017.  But it’s basically the photo dump of all the photos I took at Momo-con that year, and because I imagine photo galleries are the one thing that never gets old from the rando-internet traveller, they’ll always have some relevance on the web.

I vaguely remember this was the first time I was getting to use my new L-series lens at a convention, and thinking how heavy it was, but the photo quality that came from it was worth it, as I had some photoshoots of mythical then-gf in her Sweetheart Annie costume, as well as my famiry friends rocking Bioshock cosplay.

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This is the plot of Resident Evil 4

Las Plagas came into play in a similar fashion: as the fable of climate change miraculously becomes reality, bacteria and viruses long-trapped in ice, are coming back to life as they are being melted free

Now I don’t want to get too political and be all like see, this is why climate change is a real thing, but this is pretty much the plot to Resident Evil 4, and all subsequent Resident Evil games that utilized Las Plagas.  But instead of evil Umbrella/whatever evil corporation actively digging and seeking out long-dormant bacteria and viruses, in this case it’s kind of scarier in the sense that it’s not being controlled by man, but are kind of unveiling themselves discreetly and unaccounted for on their own by virtue of being melted out of whatever frozen confinement that had been keeping them locked away for however long they’ve been out of play.

Sure, it’s starting with strains of anthrax, smallpox and the Spanish flu revealing themselves from melted graves, but at this rate, one of these days it’s only a matter of time when the real Las Plagas parasites melt their way out of rural Spain and begin infesting in modern humanity leading to the eventual downfall of mankind.  The difference is that Leon Kennedy, Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine don’t actually exist, but there are very much crooked corporations like Umbrella out there that would gladly nefariously try to weaponize and control such terrible things.

I’m just saying, this is pretty much the backstory to the plot of Resident Evil 4, and if Ivanka goes missing while on a humanitarian appearance/fashion show out in Europe, then fiction will have a pretty scary time becoming an action-packed reality.  The real-life Leon Kennedy better start training up for his eventual mission of saving the world.

Late to the dance by like, 18 years

I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it, but apparently Netflix has announced plans for a Castlevania animated series that will be released later in 2017.

Too bad Simon Belmont has already been immortalized in animated form, since like 1989, on Captain N: The Game Master

Okay, I just really wanted a reason to post a picture of Captain N Simon Belmont.

Anyway, I’m a little dubious about this idea, since video game-based animated series are almost always starting on an uphill battle, and the fact that Castlevania hasn’t really been relevant since like… Symphony of the Night, depending on one’s interpretation and dedication to the litany of Pokévania games that were released for various Game Boy platforms.  A part of me thinks that the choice of Castlevania is like television producers wanting to do something, needing reputable source material, and someone in the room thinking “I know, I used to love Castlevania, the games were hard as shit, but I’m sure we could spin it into a story,” and then one or two people recognizing the name and concept and then an idea snowballs before everyone begins to blow each other.

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Love it but hate it

Impetus: Nintendo reveals Switch, the gaming console that allows you to play games handheld as well as on television

The technology behind this is truly game breaking.  I’m very much in awe at Nintendo’s ambitions and forward thinking when it comes to the gaming industry.  Microsoft and Sony aren’t even remotely in the same stratosphere when it comes to competing with Nintendo visions, because they’re too busy fighting each other, churning out products that require a hundred updates a week with a video game occasionally playable.

I’d love to read or hear about the creative concepting behind Switch; and the moments when they realized that it wasn’t impossible to feasibly create something that could be played on televisions as well as through handheld capacity.  On top of that, it’s designed to be a very social gaming system, that allows for lots of multiplayers, as long as controllers are available.  It probably was something really inspirational to be a part of.

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The Pikachu Game stories, July 16-23

Fucking milennials.  Haven’t they played an RPG before?  Don’t they understand that as players become more experienced, the difficult just might scale?  Haven’t they ever endured some video game grinding before??

This particular article, documenting the “agonizing” process in which The Pikachu Game has the audacity to scale and continuously add more and more experience requirements to hit higher levels, and all I really get out of it is that today’s video gamers simply don’t have the tenacity or patience to know what it’s like to achieve the next numbered level, once they’ve been through the trenches for a little bit.

Back in my day, we called it grinding, because that’s exactly what it feels like at times.  Gamers today are even luckier, with so many games having so many options to grind less, be it in-game XP boosters, pay-for-XP boosts, or even hiring a Chinese guy to grind out levels for you.  I still remember playing Final Fantasy IV, having to kill like 80,000 behemoths and red dragons in order to get to level 99, and they could beat your ass all the way from level 50 to even when you hit the 90s.

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Ho hum, another game championship, another Korean win

lol ESPN: Lee “Infiltration” Seon-woo wins EVO 2016’s Street Fighter V championship

First off, gaming has come a long way, seeing as how this particular story was broadcast on the front page of ESPN.com.   Not only can you read about the NFL’s collective dick getting sucked, Tom Brady, the New York Yankees and the NBA D-League, you can now occasionally get some articles about video games and video game events, like EVO and the League of Legends World Championships. (but very little about Major League Baseball outside of New York, Los Angeles or Boston)

Ultimately, the headline is not as cavalier as I try to make it sound, because at least as far as the Street Fighter scene is concerned, SF is a franchise that has mostly been dominated by Japan throughout the years.  There are guys all over the world who have made names for themselves, representing the United States, France, South Korea, and other countries, but typically when it comes to the EVO Championships, Japan has typically run the table on the Street Fighter franchise games.

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Chronicling The Pikachu Game stories seemed like a good idea

Like many across the regions of the world in which the game has been released, I’ve been playing Pokemon Go.  Or as I like to refer to it as, The Pikachu Game.

I wish I could say that I was amongst the game’s elite already, but let’s be real here, I simply don’t have as much free time to play as much as I’d like to.  In fact, I can barely get the game to run for more than like 20 minutes at a time, because I keep crashing whenever I catch a pidgey or a zubat or whatever the things not actually Pikachu are.

Either way, I’m finding enjoyment from the game, and it’s actually a little fascinating, a little amusing, and a little bit cool that so many people are into it, and for once, I’m actually a part of the crowd, instead of being the contrarian hipster I can sometimes become, when it comes to something so mainstream.

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