Today's Notes 8/21/21: Went down to South Park to have myself a time

Good afternoon everybody,

Well last night's stream was certainly interesting as it relates to the South Park Trilogy on the original PlayStation.. and we used the PS3 for these shenanigans... and this will consist of a few mini-reviews.F

So first up was South Park, the first person shooter that was originally on the Nintendo 64 and then ported to the PlayStation. It's controls are pretty strange, with no use of the analog sticks on the PS3, so we're using the bumper buttons to aim up and down. It looks pretty good, but the draw distance is so short it's makes you wonder if the town of South Park is constantly surrounded by fog. We played through the first five stages, coming and so we got to see a lot of things, such as how the town is laid out and how far we're roaming from the start point, and since we were using Cartman, I assume the start point was his house. Enemies seem to pick up in variation as you progress, but I got really tired of shooting the turkeys, and the enemy A.I. tendency to charge and swarm the player makes me grateful that this game does indeed have a god-mod and provides infinite ammo. This game's biggest strength is the fully voiced cut-scenes, which serves as a nice way to progress the story along.

Next up with South Park: Chef's Luve Shack, which is your standard Puzzle / Party game, similar to the Jackbox Party collections you can find on Steam. This supports up to four players, but can be played solo, but it's a real drab experience. The trivia portion has also sorts of topics such as pop culture of things prior to 1999, science and historical trivia, plus South Park trivia (Guess DJ Slope of Slope's Game Room was wrong about that one). Chef's Luv Shack really shines with it's mini-games, several of which are based around actual things from the show such as Cartman riding a mechanic bull, the Chicken Lover and the kitty wanting Cartman's Pot Pie. Really would bet these would be a ton of fun with two or more people, but with Covid, I'm not bringing anyone here any time soon/

Lastly, South Park Rally... which has to be one of the worse games I've ever player, and probably the worst game of the year for me. First the one positive is that you can fully customize the controls, reassign the buttons to what feels natural to you... now beyond there, there is nothing positive about South Park Rally. It's standard 'race' mode, is a hit check 4 check points over the course of 3 laps, which is fine, Forza Horizon 4 has a lot of races like that... but with South Park Rally, you can take any route you want,  making it very easy to get turned around and loss. But get this you have to unlock any of the other game modes as you play the Championship mode. I've played my fair share of racing games, never have I seen it where they basically prevent you from trying to see what you might like playing. I was very disappointed in it to the point I just said the hell with it and threw in something else.

That something else was Vs, which came out in 1997. Published by THQ, this game looks good,, controls well and has a killer sound track. Now most people will remember Vs. based on the ads that featured Mia in most gaming magazines back in the mid-late 90s. Oddly enough it doesn't have a standard arcade mode, but it does have a Survivor and Challenge modes which kind of play like an arcade mode, with continues and such. The controls can be customized, to where you can bind combination inputs like Punch+Evade to one of the bumper buttons. I wouldn't mind dedicating more of a night to it to see how deep the Challenge or Survivor Mode actually is.

Anyway, here's the list of clips from last night!

• Virtua Fighter 2 was on PC... I own a copy! 
• DJ Pon 3 aka Vinyl Scratch Joins The Collection! 
• A Garrus T-Shirt: Raise Your Hand If You Haven't Been Killed Before 
• 
  It's something special.... 
• I've got snowballs of steel 
• I was expecting an explosion... 
• That was an actual question 
  
• Cartman Rides The Mechanical Bull 
• Beefcake! BEEFCAKE!!!!!. 
• Revenge is the proper answer... 
• They are coming right for us! 
• The butchering of a Mitch Hedberg joke...
• It appears we are in the lead... 
• He we actually did it... and crashed!
• Go Cartman Go! . 
• First Time Playing This
• The Disney Plus Joke From The Chat 
• That did not take long
• Get them in the corner!
• He's a business man and he's dressed like that?

 Following the stream we raided Oldish22 over at twitch.tv/oldish22 who was playing Final Fantasy XIV! He's a good due, and you should check him out when he's on!

We added a new Funko to the collection, from My Little Pony DJ Pon 3, aka Vinyl Scratch, which is #05 in the Funko My Little Pnny set. I am currently on the trail of a Doctor Whooves Vinyl Figure.

While organizing my book shelves yesterday morning, I found some odd games from the Windows 95/98 era... Triple Play 98, Jazz Jackrabbit 2, Pitfall the Mayan Adventure & Virtua Fighter 2. VF2 was a great find because it does prove what I said that it was a a game I played on PC, and is why I play Pai. The version of Pitfall the Mayan Adventure is the one that came exclusive with IBM PC's back in the day. I am surprised at the retro buyers market for Jazz Jackrabbitt 2, but even more surprised that Epic you know the studio behind Fortnite, hasn't done anything with the franchise in over 20 years. Triple Play 98I remember playing better on a Windows 98 machine as opposed to a Windows 95 one, .

 

Today Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout lasted 34 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 647 kcal, but we did an extra 17 minutes with an additional calorie burn of 315 kcal, so the total session was 51 minutes with a total estimated calorie burn of 963 kcal. The exercises for today with the high setting for Difficult Combos #1 #2 and #3 for the daily workout, and for the extra, we focused on the low setting for those same exercises, because there were achievements listed for performing those. Now these Difficult Combos certainly are harder than the standard variants, and its very easy to get crossed up based on what you has gotten use to seeing in terms of a pattern.

Fitness Boxing 2: Rhythm & Exercise Achievements

1. Triple Shooting Star: Acquire a 3-star rating in every workout (low)
2. Triple Supernova: Acquire a 3-star rating in every workout (high) 
3. Extreme Trainer Lv. 1: Acquire 28,000 point or more in Difficult Challenge Combo #1 (Low) 
4. Extreme Trainer Lv. 2: Acquire 28,000 point or more in Difficult Challenge Combo #2 (Low) 
5. Extreme Trainer Lv. 3: Acquire 28,000 point or more in Difficult Challenge Combo #3 (Low)  
6. Extreme Trainer Lv. 4: Acquire 56,000 point or more in Difficult Challenge Combo #1 (High)
7. Extreme Trainer Lv. 5: Acquire 56,000 point or more in Difficult Challenge Combo #2 (High) 
8. Extreme Trainer Lv. 6: Acquire 56,000 point or more in Difficult Challenge Combo #3 (High)  
9. Monster Weight Puncher Lv. 2: Reach a total punch count of 360,000 HITS
   

We're going to go back to using Lin every day at the trainer since the next closest achievement to get is Lin's Champion which is to train with Lin for over 50 hours, and we already put in 44 hours. Each of the other trainers I used for 17 hours or less, so they were each take a while to get to their respective champion achievements.  Regardless we're at 72% completion of the EX achievements thus far. 

For tonight's stream, we're back to Pokemon Let's Go Eevee as we head off to the Seafoam Islands, we got a battles in between plus there will be attempts to catch whatever Pokemon we can find! The higher we can push out levels the hopefully easier time we'll have with the elite four!

And on that note we'll see you later today over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

Today's Notes 8/15/21: Weirdness After The Stream

Good morning everybody,

Last night got real interesting after the stream when a car went speeding around the corner in front of my house, hit the curb that leads to the area behind my home, hit my fence then ricocheted off to hit another fence of another person's home on the opposite side, then a tree resulting in their car flipping over. Thankfully, the driver survived and since it happened super late there was no one out on the sidewalks. Got the case number from the police officer that arrived on the scene... but fuck me, this was not something anyone should have to deal with.

Anyway last night's stream of Pokemon: Let's Go Eevee certainly saw a lot of roaming around as we battle away along route 15 to get to Fuchsia City, but we didn't tackle the join straight away, instead we knocked out one side quest that lead to Eevee learning another special move so it can move heavy objects and then went to tackle 'Pokemon Road', which if memory serves me right was a bike only path in Pokemon Blue, Red & Yellow back in the 90s. We caught a variety of Pokemon, Rapidash being the biggest find before finally taking of the Fuchsia City gym, which were all poison type Pokemon, which meant the use antidotes was certainly required, but none of my Pokemon were knocked out.

Afterward, found the special technique that allows Eevee to basically surf on the water to finally start capturing some water Pokemon, but then I remembered the Power Plant, and after looking it up because I couldn't remember how to get there, went to capture Zapados. The Power Plant is filled with electric type Pokemon and does have the potential to battle wild Electrodes since they look like Pokeballs. But since we were going after Zapados, that was certainly a battle against wild Pokemon, and a legendary one at that. Eevee weakened it before I swapped them out for Charizard who barely hanged on to deliver the final blows.

Capturing Zapados proved to be quite difficulty, because aiming with the joycons is virtually impossible, even using Ultra Balls, Zapados had a red ring meaning capturing it would be a challenge... so we went through about maybe 70 Ultra Balls and probably 50 regular Pokeballs + a bunch of berries before finally capturing it. I'm guessing the level of difficulty was justified because Zapados apparently does not flee, it's just a matter of sticking with it to capture it

So with all this done, I now have a better understanding of what it's going to take to capture Moltres and Articuno, and my attention will turn to the Seafoam Islands next week with capturing as many water type Pokemon I can find and battling my way to the next 

Of course we got clips for you to enjoy from the stream!

• We Will Mess Around With The South Park PS1 Trilogy On Friday! 
• That was super effective! 
• Eevee Just (Took) Out Its Soul! 
• We Got A Rapidash!
• Our 2nd Eevee Evolves Into Vaporeon
• We Got A Tentacruel 
  
• This Should Be Effective 
• Charizard Holds On To Put Down Zapdos! 
• We Captured Zapdos! 

 And since it's Sunday that means we have a highlight reel of all the stuff we did on Twitch this week, which includes Fitness Boxing 2: Rhythm & Exercise, Overwatch, Chrono Cross, Metal Slug 3, Smite, Tom Clancy's The Division, Star Trek Online, Triple Play 98, WWE Crush Hour, Street Fighter V and Pokemon Let's Go Eevee, plus some of the Just Chatting segments!  

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout lasted 31 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 569 kcal. The exercises for today were Double Combo #2, the Left Right Step Combo and Advance Combo #2. Kind of odd that all the missed movements I had occurred out of the South Paw stance. We're up to 88 out of 100 for the Karen's Best Friend Achievement, which I should accomplish I think by Thursday.

Also, Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was streamed, so we got some clips of it too!

• Double Combo #2 8/15/21 
  
•  Left Right Step Combo 8/15/21
• Advance Combo #2 8/15/21 

I joked about it, but I was successful in tracking down a copy of South Park's Chef's Luv Shack for the PlayStation, meaning I now have the trilogy of PSone South Park Games (South Park & South Park Rally). With all three games in my collection, I figure this Friday night (August 20th) we'll have a South Park night featuring all three games. If anything I can joke about about how these are the games that Matt Stone and Trey Parker want people to forget existed.

With the start of a new week means we're playing Overwatch tonight, I don't think we'll have Mayhem as an option tonight since I know it was in the arcade mode list on Saturday, so this will most likely be a quick play only stream tonight.

And on that note we'll see you later tonight over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

Today's Notes 8/13/21: WWE Crash Hour Is Proof Of Vince McMahon's Insanity

Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream was a triple feature of video games, Star Trek Online, WWE Crash Hour and Tripe Play 98. 

Star Trek Online was its usual fair of grinding out the endeavor quests that happened to be active on the day of streaming, but I did have to 're-roll', one because of a particular issue. You see there is a  endeavor quests that calls for facing the Tzenkethi on the ground, and there is only two ways to do that. One is to replay a story mission, and the other is to play Dranuur Beach Assault which require 10 players, making it one of the toughest endeavor quests to complete because no one plays it willingly. Which is a shame because it really is a stand out Task Force Operation that I actually won't just be going through the motions playing (i.e. Bug Hunt)

Once STO was done, we loaded up WWE Crash Hour for the PlayStation 2 and boy do I have opinions about the concept of this game. First off, it plays fine, the controls are easy to learn and of the characters / vehicles I used (Trish Stratus, William Regal and Steve Austin) everything seemed very responsive to my mad cap way of getting around the arenas. But the actual idea of WWE Crash Hour was actual foreshadowing into what Vince McMahon has done in the 19 years since it's release.

You see McMahon's desire of making the WWE about everything other than wrestling has certainly become more prominent over the past 19 years, with the WWE Studios Divisions, the WWE Network, Camp WWE the XFL revival, the Tough Enough revivals and so forth. He wants to have great influence over entertainment in general. Hell the WWE has become more of a badly over produced day-time soap opera at the expense of actual good decision making that it basically drove me away from being a fan. (Note: AEW is even worse)

But as the title of this blog indicates, WWE Crash Hour of Vince's insanity, because guess what someone had to pitch this idea to him at some point, and much like the WWE City in Scooby-Doo WrestleMania Mystery, you could tell that McMahon love the idea of controlling all of television and having his hand picked Superstars featured on everything because that has been his objective since the true peak of the WWE in the 1980s, because hey, he drove every other wrestling promotion out of business in the United States, certainly he (in his mind) could do the same to every other form of entertainment right? Thankfully the answer to that was no but as I indicate it came at the cost of driving long term fans like me away.

Don't get me wrong I still enjoy the WWE video games, but the actual product on TV... that can fuck right off.

Anyway, after WWE Crash Hour, we switched over to Triple Play 98, and after figuring out how to navigate the menus because it seems better formatted for Windows 98 (and I do have the disc for that version of TP98), we got into a game between the New York Mets and the Philadelphia Phillies. It took me a a few innings to figure out pitching, as I gave up 3 runs to the Mets in the first, and then figured out the timing for hitting to rally back to a 4-3 lead, then gave up a game tying home run in the top of the 8th before going a head 5-4 in the bottom of the 8th... and then somehow worked my way out of a 2-out bases loaded game. Needless to say it was an intense game. 

In comparison to Triple Play 97, Triple Play 98 is a lot better in how it feels to play in terms of executing hitting and pitching... base running is still FUBAR, but hey, it's a near 25 year old baseball game.

 Anyway here's the list of clips from last night.

• Just Chatting: My Memories Of Rampage World Tour
• Star Trek Online: A Fury of Strikes 
• Star Trek Online: Random Quoting Of Robin Hood Men In Tights is Random 
• Star Trek Online: The timing to catch her 
• Star Trek Online: Take Down The Flagship
• Star Trek Online: I am here everybody can relax!
• WWE Crush Hour: Trish is all about Talent & Ability 
• WWE Crush Hour: The Trash Talk Is Real 
• WWE Crush Hour: DUUUDE!!!! 
• WWE Crush Hour: Regal Has Control! 
• WWE Crush Hour: We Smacked Their Stupid Little Face! 
• WWE Crush Hour: A Win For Austin! 
• Triple Play 98: Olerud Makes Me Go Uh-Oh... 
• Triple Play 98: Iceman Would Be Pleased 
• Triple Play 98: A 2-Run Hit For Mickey Morandini! 
• Triple Play 98: It's way back! 
• Triple Play 98: Will It Drop In?! 

Yesterday we added Rampage World Tour for the PlayStation to the collection. Now this is a game I've only ever played in an arcade... sorta. You see there was a convenience story a few blocks from where I live now that often had two arcade machines, one was Mortal Kombat 3 (and later Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3), and the other would rotate in and out but at one point it was Rampage World Tour. I figure this will be a fine game to feature on a random Thursday.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout lasted 28 minutes with an estimate calorie burn of 428 kcal. The exercises for today were Hook Combo #2, Beginner Combo #1 and the Front Back Step Combo. We are now up to 83 out of 100 for the Karen's Best Friend achievement. 

Over on Twitter there was something about posting your four 'mains' from fighting games, and it actually took me a bit of time to come up with four. Obviously Sakura is my main in any Capcom fighting game she's in, going all the way back to Street Fighter Alpha 2... Cassie Cage was my main in Mortal Kombat 11 from earlier this year, Pai pretty much is my main in the Virtua Fighter series... but to come up with a fourth was a bit tough... so I went with Ragna The Bloodedge from the BlazBlue franchise because we used him a lot in the story modes.

For tonight's stream we'll be playing Street Fighter V, in particular, it's story mode, and I did forget we did play Mortal Kombat 11's story mode this year. Still, it'll be interesting to see if the story of SFV is better done than Marvel vs Capcom Infinite's. 

And on that note we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

Today's Notes 5/30/21: Last Night Was A Random Night!

Good afternoon everybody,

Last night's stream was without question a night of many things, as we jumped from game to game.We'll start with the one sour note from last night, which was the fact WCW Vs The World simply would not go past the loading screen after selecting who I wanted to play as and who I wanted to face, so we couldn't get into an actual match. I tried it on the PlayStation 2 and the PlayStation 3, so that was a bit disappointing.

Of course disappointment did not last for long, as our attention turned towards Forsaken, a game whose advertisements in things like GamePro and Eletronic Gaming Monthly gave the impression it was an RPG, but no, it's a pure 360-degree shooter that probably would induce actually motion sickness into soft-heated MOBA players. Forsaken comes across as a game where it feels like the developers were trying to assign everything to a button and couldn't quite grasp how to incorporate analog controls. Still we made it through the first level at least.

Twitch Clip: Hey We're Making Progress!

Next up was Gex, a game that originally was on the 3DO, but perhaps the version I'm most familiar with was the PC port. Gex is your typical plat-former video game of the 90s, and it's most memorable trait was perhaps that Gex made pop culture references and could be a little snarky at times. While we didn't get out of the Cemetery section, we did get through several levels, and had a good time with it. Gex actually does hold up pretty well game play wise.

Twitch Clip: I'm Jumped Onto It.... I Jumped Through The Platform?!

Attention then turned to Triple Play 97, and here's a game I played a lot back in the day.... on PC. Graphically, Triple Play 97 does not hold up well regarding how the players look, but the stadiums do look great, and pitching is probably a lot more easy to pick up on than hitting. Taking the opening day 1996 Phillies into the field.... we lost to the Oakland A's in a well paced game. One thing that certainly holds up about Triple Play 97 is the play-by-play commentary of Jim Hughson which is extremely well programmed, there are a couple of minor glitches with it but nothing to distracting.

Twitch Clip: And A Run Will Score

We then jumped into the PlayStation 2 era with Rocky, playing a few fights (Rocky vs Apollo Creed, Apollo vs Ivan Drago, Rocky vs Drago, and Clubber Lang vs Drago). I was stunned at how gorgeous this game looks for being nearly 20 years old, and plays pretty damn smoothly as well. Something that probably would've helped this game would've been some play-by-play commentary as the announcers during the big fights in the Rocky films added a lot to it. Something that clearly stood out was how fucking over-powered Drago was,  As I was all over him, knocking him down three times in two rounds, and then he went nuts and just brutalized me. It was fucking hilarious.

Twitch Clip: I Get Knocked Out By Dragon

The next game to see how it played was 007: From Russia With Love, and this really did surprise me in how it looked, sounded and played. One thing I can say about EA when it had the James Bond license, they certainly did try to make good games, and playing through the first two areas of the game certainly gave me the impression they were really going all out. Sean Connery actually voicing Bond certainly added a lot to the charm, and the work on making many of the characters who appeared in the film look like the actors who portrayed them was incredible for the time. We'll certainly come back to From Russia With Love as a big campaign game to fully finish down the road, starting from the beginning.

Twitch Clip: Okay That Was Cool 

Now during the stream, the United States Postal Service made a very late delivery at 7:38 PM EST, and I've never seen actual mail be delivered that late in my neighborhood. But what arrived was Mortal Kombat 4 (with it's strategy guide) for the original PlayStation. So we placed it into the the PS2 to see if it worked and yup it did. I have not played MK4 since probably 2001, but one thing remained true... Liu Kang's button inputs for special moves. We did not clear a tower, but for a quick look to see how it played we could get a lot of fun out of it, particularly if I take a nigh to get all the character endings.

Twitch Clip: Flying Kicks In Multiple Directions

Following last night's stream, I went achievement hunting as I was trying out Capcom Arcade Stadium, and this collection of classic Capcom games gives me mixed feelings. On one hand it's a great collection of Capcom's games that could be found in Arcades in the 80s and early 90s, but on the other hand, there is no on-line co-op despite that being a huge reason why people got the Capcom Beat 'Em Up Bundle & Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collections! That said, we did get a lot of achievements last night but a lot of the remaining ones require 'time' being put into playing the games. FOr example one requires 100 hours total play time, and to put that into perspective, Final Fight from beginning to end takes about 50 minutes. Anyway here's the list of achievements from last night

1. Coin Consumer: Insert nine or more coins in one play session.
2. Trend Follower: Play a game that has a bonus campaign in progress.
3. Tempo Conductor: Use the Cycle Speed (Up/Down) or Max./Min. Speed (Hold) feature.
4. If I Could Turn Back Time...: Use the Rewind feature.
5. Welcome to the Stadium: Play a game.
6. First Failure: Get a Game Over screen.
7. Future High Score Lister: Play a game in Score Challenge or Timed Challenge mode.
8. First Taste of Victory: Clear a game.
9. Good Job!: In one play session, gain 10,000 CASPO while playing Score Challenge or Timed Challenge mode.
10. Great Job!: In one play session, gain 25,000 CASPO while playing Score Challenge or Timed Challenge mode.
11. Amazing Job!: In one play session, gain 50,000 CASPO while playing Score Challenge or Timed Challenge mode.
12. Remedial Student: Reach Class 5: Experimenter.
    

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session went 45 minutes, with an estimated calorie burn of 770. We missed 3 actions out of 1984 (A jab and two left hooks were the missed punches). Today's' exercises included Beginner Combo #2 (Set a new personal best for it at the No Mercy difficulty setting), Advance Combo #1, Intermediate Combo #2 and Weaving Combo #1. We're up to 80 out of 100 for Martina's Best Friend achievement, if we keep getting 3 points a day we should have it unlocked by next Tuesday (next Wednesday at the latest). 

We have new things in the collection today as well: Final Fantasy Origins for the PlayStation which includes remasters for Final Fantasy 1 and 2, Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga for the PlayStation 2, and for the PlayStation 3 Lucha Libre AAA: Heroes Del Ring, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan & Fighting Edition which includes SoulCalibur V, Tekken Tag Tournament 2 and Tekken 6..

Since it's Sunday tonight we will be playing Overwatch, mostly to get in the matches needed to get the Echo skin that is part of the Anniversary Event that is currently taking place. And on that note we'll see yo

Highlights for the week of May 23, 2021

 Here are highlights from http://twitch.tv/fredcasden for the of week of May 23, 2021. This week featured Overwatch, Fitness Boxing 2: Rhythm & Exercises, Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, Tom Clancy's The Division 2, Star Trek Online, Mortal Kombat 11, 007: From Russia With Love, Forsaken, Gex, Mortal Kombat 4, Rocky & Triple Play 97!

 

Today's Notes 5/28/21: Star Trek Online & More!

Good morning everybody,

Well I woke up unusually early today (a bit before 7 AM), and I already know there is no work today because usually Memorial Day ended up being a 4 day weekend before the Covid-19 Pandemic. 

Last night's stream of Star Trek Online was the first time in a while where we were able to dedicate the entire stream to STO because of the House United Content which featured two new missions. The first "Warriors of the Empire" basically introduces three patrols under the umbrella of a story mission, but this does has a ground portion that see the players going into the mycelial realm to help bring the Elachi into the final battle, since they were a big part of several missions over the last couple of years as it pertains to this story arc. The second mission, "A Day Long Remembered" is a major end point as the player takes part in the Klingon Civil War by being on the front lines, as J'mpok is basically STO's parallel to Donald Trump. This is probably one of the most ground combat heavy missions in STO's history making it a lot of fun. Of course, there was a new Task Force Operation, which is a crazy wild mess called "Remain Klingon" and unlike every other TFO, it actually connects with the story in that it shows what is happening in space. 

Now we did all of this using Zagreus, my Federation character, and so next Thursday, we'll go through it all again with Sorra, my Klingon Defense Force character. This is mainly to keep things even between both characters and to see what subtle dialog changes there are, because there are often are a few. For example, Sorra has gone to Grethor and met Gowan, so she would have a personal stake in making sure he was able to go to Stovokor. 

Of course we do have clips from last night which I'll list next

Twitch Clips: I have a surprise for them... haha!

Twitch Clips: We bring the thunder! We bring the noise! I'm A Spore Smasher!

Twitch Clips: We fight in the streets!

Twitch Clips: Mostly for that look J'ula gives Zagreus

Following the stream I messed around with a few things, played a little of Triple Play 97, and was amazed by the very obvious. With the rosters being set for opening day 1996, that means Curt Schilling is not on the Phillies roster at all. That said, I was pleasantly reminded that Triple Play 97 did have solid play-by-play announcing. Took me a while to figure out pitching, and it's probably going to take me while to remember the timing for hitting.

Also turned my attention to Power Rangers Battle for The Grid and ran a few online matches to try out Ryu and Chun-Li, and I can safely say this: they play nearly as they do in Marvel vs Capcom 3. There are a few differences, but anyone who has played say at least Street Fighter Alpha 2 will be able to jump into Battle for the Grid with Ryu and Chun-Li on their team and be able to hold their own.

Also loaded up Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons last night to get the final achievement in the game 

1. Whale Song: You practiced singing.

With that done, I'm basically out of achievements I could easily go for based on games I have currently installed on both the Xbox One and Xbox Series consoles. It's not like I don't have games I could play to get achievements, it's more of wanting to save those games to play them for the first time on stream. Granted I could go after the Xbox 360 version of the Mass Effect games achievements lol.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 Session was 43 minutes in length, and involved a lot of step movements with the sets being the Left-Right Step Combo, Double Combo #2, Front-Back Step Combo (at the No Mercy setting) and closing out with Uppercut Combo #2. Also did  today's set using a Mesh Waist Trimmer which pretty much forced me to keep my abs tight, and needless to say, so it was certainly a different experience. Now I did miss a couple of punches and they were Left Uppercuts from the Orthodox stance, don't know what it is, but that is consistently a punching movement that I rarely get 100% on.  We're also up to 74 out of the 100 points needed for Martina's Best friend achievement. Also since work has been inconsistent lately, all of my workouts this week have been 40+ minutes, making this probably the most even week I've had, and we already past April's calorie burn today, as we're up to 21726 for the month of May. 

Now the reason I was using a Mesh Waist Trimmer is that since I started using the original Fitness Boxing last July and switching to Fitness Boxing 2 in December, I have lost 40 pounds, but as of late getting the pounds to drop have been a lot harder, so my mom figured it could help as most of my weight is in my mid-section. Every little bit helps as they say.

For tonight's stream, we'll be jumping back into Mortal Kombat 11 with the Aftermath story, which should probably take only take a couple of hours, but depending on that, we might go after the achievement for playing Casual Matches. 

And on that note we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

 

Today's Notes 5/20/21: The Division, New Games & More

Good morning everyone,

Well it's one of those 'up early but turns out there are no work assignments' type of days. But I took advantage of this yesterday by clearing out a bunch of stuff. Going to have to figure out the best way to dispose of some old VGA monitors that date back to the 90s. 

Anyway last night's stream featured Tom Clancy's The Division, where it was more of a casual night, just picking off enemies. Big thanks to Iceman for joining in on the fun. We did clear out the area of the game listed as Gramercy, and near as I can tell there are five more areas left in the game. Did not pick up any achievements last night related to the Division, but there are 7 story based achievements left and several related to collectables, so these are gradual over the course of game play. But we have some clips from last night for you to check out.

Twitch Clips: Bang! You're Dead! And Bang... You're Dead Too!

Twitch Clips:  I'll just hide right here... huddling the car for comfort

Of course all was not lost on the achievement front, as I did a lot of grinding in Mortal Kombat 11, to the point I'm on the doorstep of getting the Tower Champion achievement which I should be able to knock out tomorrow. Still we got one achievement last night. 

1. Have We Met: Equip 5 different character intros

That said, I am considering doing at least three Mortal Kombat 11 streams, one for chasing the achievement for playing online matches and two based on the story mode and Aftermath DLC (granted Aftermath does not have any achievements associated with it). 

We added a couple of old game games to my collection, after coming across www.j2games.com, which is a retro game dealer here in New Jersey. What was added was Forsaken, Triple Play 97, Triple Play 98, Power Rangers: Time Force and Power Rangers: Dino Thunder. The first four games were for the original PlayStation, while the fifth game was for the PlayStation 2. I'm also on the hunt for a few other odd gems. 

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was solid, a big focus on lower body (double step, front back, and left right step combos), and it lasted about 30 minutes. We're up to 49 points out of 100 for Martina's Best Friend achievement. Considering how wacky this week has been work wise, because we did an extended work out on Tuesday we're kind of on-par to equal last week's total out put.

Today is Thursday, which means the lead off for tonight's stream will be Star Trek Online, and I'm not 100% sure what will be second game we're going to feature. I could go several ways, with a lot of options, but figuring out what will be good contrast to STO is always an interesting challenge.

And on that note we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

 

Today's Notes 5/8/21

Good evening everybody,

I did not get up till about 3 PM Today, but I have a good excuse this time, I was up till 5 AM this morning, because after last night's stream I got into another round of going through stuff to see what I could find, what I would keep and what's getting tossed.

So first, last night's stream, we played a little indie game called Virginia. The reason was that earlier in the week long time friend of the channel, ShadowStrkr24 was going to gift me the game, but turns out I already had it. So while I was trying to figure out what to do last night I remembered I said we would play Virginia because he said it was short game beginning to end, and he was right, it took about 2 hours. Virginia is purely a cinematic game, with very limited game play involvement, to the point where all the achievements seem purely accidental to come across. It does has an awesome musical score and is a gorgeous game, though what the hell a lot of the symbolism meant in the game was lost on me. 

Twitch Clip: Can We Get Some Service?

Twitch Clip: What The Hell Is A Buffalo Doing Here?!

Twitch Clip: How The Hell DId You Get In Here?

Twitch Clip: Of Course It's Aliens

Following that, we jumped back to the PlayStation One era with ECW Anarchy Rulz, and boy does this game reflect the turmoil ECW was under in mid-2000, with the massive roster turnover, in fact one of the biggest rivalries in ECW in 2000 was Masato Tanaka versus Mike Awesome, but only Tanaka was in Anarchy Rulz and and Awesome was in Hardcore Revolutin while both men had highlights in each games video intro. Game play wise it is more streamlined than ECW Hardcore Revolution and probably is the most 'realistic' North America made wrestling game in terms of how you can only perform more impactful moves based on the 'health' of your opponent but that results in the matches going on forever. Case in point, as a joke I set a Tornando Death Match for a time limit of 40 minutes, where I was using Tommy Dreamer, my CPU partner was the Sandman and the opponents were CW Anderson and Billy Wiles.... the match ended up going the full 40 minutes. 

Twitch Clip: Dreamer WIns With A Diamond Cutter? 

Twitch Clip: The Only Way A Rhodes Is Gonna Get Over Is If They Wear Polka Dots! 

Twitch Clip: Who Booked This Crap? I Did!

Now as I said at the start last night I went through some more stuff, finding things to throw out, but things that I found were pretty cool, including my near complete set of the Star Trek The Next Generation novels, more computer game manuals, several games from the Windows 95/98 era including Tomb Raider, Tomb Raider II, Triple Play 97 and NBA Live 98. While the Tomb Raider games have seen re-release in modern times, if I could get the later two games to work it would be pretty awesome in regards to featuring classic sports games.

For Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session, the daily was 40 minutes plus we did an addition 30 with Free Exercises. This resulted in a new personal best with punches thrown of 2922 and a new exercise duration time of 1 hour 10 minute 49 sections. Best Friend Achievement for Bernardo saw a big jump to 78 points... so if I'm getting 3 points for the daily workout, I wonder what are the qualifications for each point in Free Exercise mode. 

For tonight's stream we'll be wrapping up ESPN Major League Baseball on the PlaySation 2 with the World Series between my Philadelphia Phillies facing the Boston Red Sox. We'll be playing each game, so there is a good chance we're going to sweep the Red Sox in four games!

So on that though we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!