I finally started reading through the Frieren manga (the Viz Manga app subscription is an absurd value for the cost, by the way) and I think I love this series. It's a bit vanilla in terms of panel structure, but then, so was Death Note; the art and story are really cozy, though.

Man, how the hell do I get two nails in two months in the same wheel when I only drive to and from work these days.

Ahhhhh, son of a salamander. My car won't start, and the battery jumper pack I keep isn't working. I wonder if my battery's been frozen. It's 23℉, so it's not like it's supremely cold or anything... but I only just got an oil change today and the car was operating fine...

So this player is playing as Asuka Kazama. But she has the most perfect Velma cosplay you ever did see, and we had an epic three-match clash. I won the first. She won the following two. The only one where it didn't come down to the wire was the third match, where Velma dominated; I won one round.

This guy beat me in our last match. When the matchmaking system paired us again a scant few fights later, I managed to rematch him and got my revenge. I feel like I'm getting slightly decent at Tekken again. Little by little... www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUwZ...

I just blitz'd Tekken 5's arcade mode as Asuka for the first time in forever. Forgot this oh-so-arcade-perfect port doesn't have endings for arcade mode, bah. Or a customization menu worth a damn, at that. ...Jinpachi. I remember why I hate fighting him. But I remembered how to cheese him as Asuka.

...I forgot that you can't actually sidestep on the Z-axis at all until Tekken 3. The only sidestep-like movement in Tekken before that is caused by specific moves that make you move on the Z-axis. Otherwise it's a bit like a 2D fighter. The old-school roots of the 3D-fighter subgenre are weird.

...Huh. Did they never release Tekken 3 for PSN...?

My Kindle is broken already. Must have put too much pressure on it at some point... siiiiiugh...

*glancing over a summary of the King of Iron Fist Tournament's part in the Tekken storyline, thinking* ...Wow, it's gonna be difficult to convince people to sign up for Iron Fist Tournament 9, given that the last three were cancelled with no winner.

Heeeey, I only had time for one match tonight after dealing with video editing and the upload... but I won a promotion match. Nice.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rH5M... I can't believe Kyo fucking killed Optimus Prime...

...Why do these two look kind of like sisters.

Oh, neat. Tekken 8's online mode has this battle at the start where depending on how good you do, you can jump straight to a more appropriate starting rank if you're not a beginner. I'm pretty amateur, but I think I did okay-ish.

God dammit, the last customization item I need for this character is GREEN EYES. Which I can get... at Level 51 of the premium fight pass. Y'know, in SoulCalibur, your other game series, I can just color my eyes. Why can't I color my eyes in Tekken, you bastards?!

...Why is Tekken 8's arcade mode easy-peasy until Stage 6, at which point it becomes an input-reading bastard intend on comboing you into oblivion, no-selling everything you do, and basically making you hate yourself for playing?

Ah, she's one of those. ...I can dig it.

...I knew I'd like Reina. I think she maaaaay just be my new main. I've been an Asuka player up until now, but I enjoy Reina's style. Also she has an axe kick. That's always a plus.

...I like how the response to fighting game devs realizing their genre has a fucking gigantic barrier to entry has just been to incorporate these semiautomatic control modes that teach the player absolutely nothing and just result in them needing to relearn the controls later anyway.

Incidentally, since Quick Saves restart from the beginning of whatever match the game saved on, the only "unfair advantage" is that you can retain your score after a loss.

Didn't have time to finish Arcade Free Mode before work. Praise the quicksave gods.

Finally snagged Tekken 8 on sale since the opportunity arose. Might not run SUPER DEE DUPER good on my rig, but I am significantly above the minimum specs, so that's something.

Not even Roy's stupid I'VE GOT IT spam will get in the way of an anime schoolgirl on a quest to save the world!

You can really tell that Roy from Rival Schools is meant to be an American-born foreigner, because he sounds like a Japanese guy who couldn't English his way out of a wet paper bag but gosh darn if he isn't going to keep on trying.

I like how the Quick Save system in these fighting collections doesn't do straight-up save states, but rather, resets you to the beginning of whatever fight you're in with your pre-fight score intact. So, abusable to a degree, but only to a degree that doesn't matter much.

Some Project Justice before work is good for the soul.

Something I've noticed about the Fighting Collection's difficulty modes that amuses me: there are a whole six stars above rank 2 (which is the default that kicks my butt about two-thirds through Arcade Mode), but only two ranks, 0 and 1, below that. Rank 0 is braindead easy.

The most disrespectful finishing strike in this game is the Yurika team technique.

For him, it was a humiliating defeat. For me... it was Tuesday.

Your Ryu-fu is lacking...

Uhhhhh... I meant to do that??

One of Sakura's win quotes in Alpha 3 Upper is "I like street fighting more than sparring in rival schools." ...I see what they did there.

Pfft. That victory animation.

I like that Frieren is basically to demons what The Doctor is to Daleks: a switch seems to go off in her brain that turns her from a quirky genius good guy into an angry ragemonster, and demons (like the Daleks) have come to regard her as a kind of Grim Reaper figure as a result.

Oh yeah, figure I'd share this- Based on a conversation from one of last week's stream, here's Bubsy Schwarzer, practitioner of the "Nine Lives One Bobcat" school of swordsmanship. (Thank you @genmathesamurai.bsky.social for this *really* dumb commission of mine. lmao) #Kiseki #Trails

I guess the localizers wanted to play up how silly Rival Schools' plot is, because the "underworld organization" referred to in the Japanese script was given the beautifully redundant "Darkside Society Organization" moniker in English. Heh.

You know what's wild? I just found out that the lead creator of Rival Schools was Hideaki Itsuno, and he also directed the second game. You know: the guy who's been in charge of mainline Devil May Cry since the fix-it phase of DMC2's late development.

Well, the difficulty select in this collection works! But the lowest setting is a bit too darn easy, and there's only one other setting between that and the default. Hopefully it'll hit a happy medium.

Oh, sadly, Sakura is not playable in Project Justice, only the original Rival Schools. I guess they wanted to distance the game a bit from Street Fighter... but that's kinda lame, honestly. Her being there made for a neat connective element. Which obviously still exists; it's referenced in SFV.

Dammit. Like all fighting games, Project Justice stops being fun approximately two thirds of the way through Arcade: at which point the priority of design becomes "force the player to spend more coins."

...The only pixel in your life bar that matters is the LAST.

Rival Schools/Project Justice is fun. Y'all should play it.

Batsu and Kyosuke acting all badass... Hinata just soakin' in the beats.

Sadly, the version of Project Justice we get in Fighting Collection 2 is of course "tHE tRUe aRCaDE eXPeRIEncE" so it's lacking the cool single-player content the Dreamcast version had. Bleeeeeeeh. They went to the trouble of porting in the console version's extra characters, though...

Oh! One of the gams in Capcom Fighting Collection 2 is a Rival Schools game. Project Justice, huh...?

Hm. Like all arcade modes, Rival Schools gets pretty rough the further you go...

...The only pixel on your health bar that counts is the last one!

WOW CAN YOU TELL THIS CHARACTER IS FROM AMERICA or were they perhaps too subtle.

Huh, Rival Schools has story scenes in Arcade Mode, but only if you restrict your two character choices to characters from the same school, apparently.