DJ Old Man Toji aka わしはトジジだ！

Many years ago, I played Beatmania IIDX. As there were no IIDX arcade machines in my home town - I settled for the PS2 games. While it could be played on a PS2 controller, it doesn't come close to the arcade experience if you don't have a Konami IIDX controller.

Of course the console IIDX controllers don't have anything on their arcade counterparts, but they were still pretty good. Though the keys some times stuck, that could be overcome with some minor modification - then the US released their own Konami IIDX controller which solved the issue of sticky keys. While I did put some time in to it, I didn't put enough to really reach a level beyond a small handful of low Hyper difficulty songs.

花吹雪 (Hanafubuki) / Normal difficulty

Skip to over a decade later, and I picked up IIDX again just a little over a month ago. Of course, I didn't bring my PS2 or my extensive collection of games with me to Japan. So what did I do? Head over to the ゲームセンター aka the arcade and play IIDX there. After a few attempts of navigating around the menu and figuring out how to not play double mode (aka 14 keys and 2 turntables), I slowly got back in to the swing of things.

The one thing I love about the arcade version - or at the very least the current version (IIDX 30 Resident), is that you can make your own playlist of songs. Given that there are 30 games' worth of IIDX songs, this is a really neat feature, instead of having to navigate around trying to find the song I want to play.

 It also means, I can save songs that I remember playing back on the PS2 over 10 years ago, and even now, I'm picking songs that I didn't realise I forgot until I started playing them and started to remember again.

In the meantime, I've taken a break from Jubeat, as I felt I hit a slump, despite playing on Extreme difficulty. There some patterns that I'm having a hard time adapting to. On the other hand, it feels good to get back in to IIDX

Nintendo 64 - It's been a while

Recently, my girlfriend got me a Nintendo 64 as a gift for our anniversary. We always ask each other what we want each year for our anniversary, and set a budget limit. She has told me what she wanted, but we agreed to go and buy it together next month, so I got my gift ahead of hers. I knew that being a second hand console, the control sticks would be loose and janky - this is pretty much known by anyone who ever owned a N64 - and I was planning on getting some replacements for them. I bought a used Hori controller from a Kanteidan-like store for a good price. Next, I decided to order a replacement gamecube-style control stick for one of the controllers, from Amazon.

Next, I decided to buy some cheap games, just to make sure the console actually works. I bought Bomberman 64 (or 爆ボンバーマン Baku Bomberman here in Japan), and the original Rogue Squadron game (known as 出撃！ローグ中隊　Shutsugeki! Rogue Chuutai/Sortie! Rogue Squadron in Japan). Fortunately, the console works but Rogue Squadron didn't boot up initially. Luckily, a quick clean of the connectors with rubbing alcohol and a cotton bud fixed it up nicely.
When I was younger, I owned both of these games (and several others), it was interesting to come back to these games after 20 years. How do they fare? Playing the original Rogue Squadron, after years of playing its sequels on the Gamecube did feel a little jarring. The controls were obviously not as polished as its successors, but it's still a fun game. As for Bomberman, it's a lot of fun, especially now that I understand how to get all the Golden Cards in each of the stages and realising you can only find 3 in each non-boss level, and that the other two require killing 30 enemies and beating the target time respectively. In all the years I owned Bomberman 64 when I was younger, I don't know how I never figured it out (or even bothered to check online). So far, I've got 93 of the cards, so I'm close to unlocking the true final world. 

However, despite my joy in getting an N64 again, my ultimate goal is to get a copy of Perfect Dark, and the 4mb expansion pack. While Goldeneye would be the obvious choice, Perfect Dark improves on everything that Goldeneye did years prior, so I feel that owning both would be kind of redundant. Will I get any other games in the future? Since there are plenty of Japanese exclusive N64 games (and living in Japan and all that), possibly. At the very least, my gf wants the OG Smash Bros. In any case, I'm having fun getting reacquainted with an old console I enjoyed from my childhood.