While Hatsune Miku’s birthday is August 31st 2007, March 9th, 3/9, is known as Miku Day. You might be wondering where the number 39 comes from. Is it her tattoo of “01”? No, that’s just because she was Crypton Future Media’s first character voice.
The number 39 comes from her name. Miku, or in katakana “ミク.” The katakana character for “mi” is very similar to the kanji character for the number 3, which is “三”, and pronounced “san.” The “ku” character, “ク“, sounds close to the Japanese number 9, which is “kyuu,” and written with the character “九.” So we have Miku, “ミク,” and san kyuu, “三九.” It is also another pun because it sounds like “thank you.”
And I thank you for reading. See you next Miku Miku time.
Vivianne finds a way to spice up her future Metroid Prime playthroughs with Randovania.
getting the morph ball in a spot that requires the grapple beam. in the beginning of the game.
I watched BashPrime’s video about the Grand Abyss in Metroid Prime 2 during christmas break, and he finished it by mentioning Metroid Prime is not only a fun speedgame but also fun to play with a randomizer. That caught my attention, because let’s be honest, when you replay Metroid Prime, you’re not really going to be playing the game that differently. So I downloaded Randovania, joined the Prime Randomizer Discord, and had a go at the Starter Preset.
Melanie plays her first Dragon Quest game, even though it’s just the demo.
It’s those three little guys!
It’s cold. There’s ice out. No better time to stay in and curl up with some RPGs like now. I just finished playing Paper Mario and The Thousand Year Door and just slid right over into the demo for the new Dragon Quest VII re-imagining. I’m really enjoying it. The diorama art style looks great on the Nintendo Switch 2. I like the ball touching puzzles, but there’s a feeling I get in this game that sticks out like a sore thumb.
Melanie: Hey Vivianne, thanks for joining me. I just wanted to check in and ask how things are going. How has it been blogging with me? Do you have any suggestions or areas for improvement?
Vivianne: It's been pretty fun! I haven't really posted much last week, but I have a few ideas for things I wanna write about (and they all involve doing a bit of research and collecting information).
Melanie: I've certainly enjoyed learning about Metroid. How have you enjoyed my posts?
Vivianne: I have! It was honestly kind of neat to see people reacting to the one you wrote about the Kobo Remote. Turns out there sure are a lot of folks that would want (or even need) something like that.
Melanie: Yeah, I wrote the title a little tongue-in-cheeky, because it is funny as a concept when comparing it to a paper book, but it definitely has real world uses and especially for accessibility. Technology and books are both helpful and funny to think about. I've started thinking about electronics with a critical eye of "Should this need to be reliant on a battery?" There's also so much detail we lose by converting analog things to bits and bytes. Like film and digital photography or listening to audio over Bluetooth.
Vivianne: Speaking of music I am honestly pretty excited about The Protomen Act 3 CD. They didn't release lyrics for the initial Bandcamp release, so I'm looking forward to reading those and figuring out the story! What are you looking forward to?
Melanie: Hmm, well let me check... The 404 Media zine should be arriving soon. I'm looking forward to the Switch 2 Animal Crossing update this week, starting Big Hops (out today), the new Dragon Quest VII Reimagined (more on that later, out next month), and Yakuza Kiwami 3 (out next month). All Nintendo Switch 2 all the time, apparently. I don't really know about albums or books prior to their release. Maybe I'll know in advance for comics and manga.
Vivianne: Dragon Quest VII Reimagined sure does look pretty good! I really like how the art style matches the charm of the original and there's even some pretty funny things that you'd see in a 2D RPG. Like the stairs that look like they're going to nowhere, but you can actually go up those to another level.
Stairway to Mid-wall
Melanie: It's really cute. Well, I can't wait to see your next post.
Vivianne: Same! I can see the drafts, but I think it's pretty fun to just like, see them as you post them.
I don’t see a lot of ads but I do come across ads in videos on YouTube that should not have made it through any sort of review. And yeah, you should be vetting your advertisers. A paycheck is a paycheck, but c’mon you need to have some standards.
This list is non-exhaustive and doesn’t include obviously harmful ads like those for gambling. If you’re even considering a gambling ad you are too far gone. Seek help immediately.
Nice stats, shame the game is moments away from destroying them.
I was having fun and enjoying my time leisurely exploring the world of Metroid Prime 4. I’ve played bits of the first 3 games, but never completed them. So when defeating the final boss deleted my progress I was devastated. Does it try to warn you? Yeah, but it didn’t quite make sense to me coming from the Like a Dragon games. Could I do anything about it when it warned me? No. I could either save my defeat of the final boss, or lose all the progress I had made since the last save. Either option would result in lost progress.
Vivianne shares SynaMax’s new video about what was one of the earliest musical performance rhythm games. Also talks a bit about his work researching Metroid Prime music, because it’s relevant to her interests.
Aside from that, SynaMax is also a video game historian, and on January 5th he uploaded a video documenting the history and restoration of what could possibly be one of the first musical performance rhythm games. It’s a good watch!
Breadcrumbs was on my list of books to read, but I never expected I would find a copy at a local bookstore. I guess that’s why that particular bookstore is called “the best comic shop in the world.” Vivianne is Polish and she has shown me Kasia Babis’s English-language YouTube channel. I don’t know much about Poland, so any attempt to learn more I must take.
Melanie read that book recommended by someone on Kind Words 2
cover art by Chris Sickels
The story of “The House in the Cerulean Sea” by TJ Klune follows a case worker for orphanages of magical children. Is this an X-Men book? It could be! I think that’s what got me to read it. I won’t say I was able to keep up with all the children’s different magical descriptors but luckily it never felt like I was missing anything. Not that the children aren’t important, because they are all amazing and lovable in their own way.
Vivianne shares BashPrime’s video about the Grand Abyss area in Metroid Prime 2, and why that room gives speedrunners so much trouble.
The Metroid Prime series has sort of become my obsession over the past 2 years. But I never looked into speedrunning and randomizers until I saw BashPrime’s video get recommended to me. Check it out! After you’re done with the video, feel free to read on.
One of my favorite purchases from last year was a Kobo Libra Colour e-reader. I had never owned an e-ink device with color before, and it’s pretty nice. E-readers solved a lot of problems with traditional paper books: non-adjustable font sizes, weight, and one book only containing one book, but what if we could optimize it even more? That’s right, we are talking about the Kobo Remote.
“is there any good ska getting released in the year of our horn 2025?” - S
When Kind Words came out I thought the idea was neat. It’s a game where you have lofi music playing in the background as you write, well, kind words to people who need to hear them, all anonymously. I didn’t use it too much, and I don’t think I ever wrote anything. I didn’t know that there was a Kind Words 2 until it came in a bundle of games I bought. The improvements are great and it’s been cathartic to say nice things to others.
Yeah. I have my issues with the game. And yet the part I was most fascinated by when I was playing this game is how much this game plays and feels like a Metroid Prime game, despite the setbacks in its design. The way the arm cannon shoots, the movement, the loading screens, the scanning, the morph ball. There’s just so much that feels exactly like the original trilogy did 20 years ago (holy fucking shit how old are these games now?), so the fact that the gameplay framework lasted this long is honestly quite impressive on its own.
i just wanted to let you know that there are some very pretty views in this game
Melanie: Last night while Vivianne and I were at our local pizzeria she suggested we listen to an album together. So then I said “and then we could blog about it!” and then I started doing what I always do: escalation.
“and then we could make a podcast!”
“and then we could make a youtube!”
“and then we could do a twitch stream!”
She wrangled my escalations back to Earth and, well, here’s a blog.
Vivianne: And it's not like we don't blog already. We both have our own blogs we write on, but because we're both software engineers, both of our blogs are custom made, but they require some upkeep (and needing to maintain stuff does lead me to writing not as much as I want). Melanie told me about Pika, and I got to try it with my own post about Metroid Prime 4. I wrote like 90% of it just in one hour during New Year's Eve and I really liked it honestly!
Anyway, I am excited to use this as an outlet to write about the things I like.
Melanie: We don't have a schedule or a structure yet, but maybe we'll figure something out. I set up a Mastodon account for us and when we start posting there should be an option to subscribe to this blog as a newsletter. I think it's very easy for this to be a pop culture blog, but I think we can make it more than that.
Vivianne: You know me, I'll have to talk about a Haken album sometime.
Melanie: You just did
Vivianne: IRL, but I haven't written about it yet did I
Melanie: Blog is over.
Vivianne: Anyway, you can read my thoughts on Metroid Prime 4 here.
Melanie: I have thoughts on Metroid Prime 4, but let's wrap this up.
Please look forward to our joint blogging!
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