I had a PSP 3000 lying around, and I did play some visual novels on it back in the day. A few days ago I dug it out and found the battery swollen, the paint flaking off, and the thing generally dead. Still, I’m attached to it, so let’s save it. I bought some parts on Taobao — pretty cheap, too — and figured I’d just refurbish it.

The LG Watch Sport officially doesn’t support swapping straps, since the antenna lives in the strap. But anything that comes apart can be replaced, as long as you can find the parts. There are two ways to buy a strap for the LG Watch Sport. One is to order from a Korean site, which comes to $58. https://www.tntkstore.com/product-page/lg-watch-sports-w281-band-international-edition-band-gray-color The other is to pick up a dead unit on Taobao. I went with the latter, because it’s cheap!

The Walkman ZX300A is probably one of the more honest players Sony has put out recently. First off, the chip. It uses Sony’s newly developed S-Master chip, which is a higher hardware revision than what’s in the Black Brick and Gold Brick, and it supports more features too. In theory the sound should be on par with those high-end models, and the price is still low — the Chinese domestic version seems to be under 3000, which is downright reasonable compared to the Black Brick, the Gold Brick, and the “Sony Sixty Thousand.” So anyway, I’m broke, I can’t afford a Black Brick, and this is all I can manage. It has every feature I need, and I’m pretty happy listening to it. Then comes the even better part: this thing keeps getting firmware updates, and the latest one is a bombshell.

I’ve played a lot of games with interesting premises, and the one that left the biggest impression on me is definitely the one where a heroine turns into an alpaca. That game was actually pretty touching. The moe girl you love most turns into an alpaca—that’s the moment that tests whether your love is real. It’s worth recommending, too. Besides heroines transforming, there’s also the protagonist-transforms genre. The famous recent one is that game where the protagonist becomes a black cat. It even got an anime, so I won’t go on about it. This kind of game always produces a lot of comedy. It’s a comedy-grade absurd premise to begin with—the protagonist suddenly turns into another species, so of course there’ll be plenty of laughs. So this genre has a new member. More, the well-known rhythm game developer, has a subsidiary of a subsidiary of a subsidiary whose brand got renamed—and that renamed brand, KATE, released its latest work: Koi wa Mofumofu! Love Me Teddy (恋はもふもふ!ラブ・ミー・テディ). Literally, “Love is Fluffy, Love Me Teddy!” Don’t bitch about why it isn’t “Love my teddy” yet—I looked it up, and “love me teddy” seems to be a reference to something. The premise is easy enough to explain: the protagonist turns into a teddy bear, gets taken home by several girls, and gets rubbed all over.

Growing up, every one of us ends up watching some… physiological, health-oriented, body-art, stimulating, videotapes. And among those… physiological, health-oriented, body-art, stimulating, videotapes, the most famous ones besides the female teacher, the flight attendant, and the OL are probably the prosecutor series. Most prosecutor-series films are about a female cop who, to fight the evil forces of darkness, infiltrates the enemy’s ranks, gets caught, gets tortured and humiliated… oh, sorry, disgraced, and then our unyielding heroine defeats the evil forces and completes her mission or whatever… Of course, this kind of educational plot isn’t only something you can see performed by Matsushita Saeko on videotape. We’ve also got the so-called “2D version” in the visual novel sphere.

Some guy with a screw loose once laid out the whole “old school” vs. “new school” thing. Of course, a guy with a screw loose doesn’t talk like a human being, so what he meant was Old School and New School. Put bluntly: “new type” and “retro type.” You see this pattern in other games, you see it in music genres, so naturally you also see it in the eroge space. Remember what the earliest eroge were like? You’d have a male lead meet a pretty girl, and after about two lines they’d start fucking, and then it was over. Same as what Carmack the Great said about FPS games: “The game is the porn, the story is superfluous.” The subtext: games exist to make you feel good, so why the hell bother with plot and authorship? If it doesn’t get you off, why the hell are you playing it? Normal games are already pigeonholed that clearly, so what about eroge? What’s an eroge for? So you can watch it like porn! So why the hell go through all that asinine setup and payoff? Just drop the pants and get to it!

Personally, I really like ClockUp’s games, because I always feel they’re very “real.” Yes, real — the kind of game that’s genuinely 18+ for adults, not one of those “it’s 18+ only because they bolted on some sex scenes” games. Honestly, if you stripped the optional HCGs out of a lot of 18+ games, the age rating would suit thirteen-year-olds better. ClockUp’s games are the opposite: even if you deleted every HCG, they still wouldn’t be okay for anyone under eighteen. It comes down to the content and the emotions the game expresses — stuff that’s hard for minors to stomach. Most of it delivers shocking gore and violence, and through those shocking images, thoughts about life and human nature. I always praise ClockUp’s games as insane, but not every ClockUp game is like that — it mostly depends on the scenario writer. Some bring in Light’s lead writer, like Nemurenu Hitsuji to Kodoku na Ookami and Maggot baits. Others are the series of small, deep works by Asa Ei, like Natsu no Kusari and euphoria. And this time Asa Ei took the pen again, teaming up with ClockUP on a new title: Erewhon.

Google Pixel Buds are Bluetooth earbuds from Google. Unlike the other Bluetooth earbuds that came out around the same time, these supposedly support all sorts of real-time translation, plus Google Assistant of course.

Honestly, my life before high school was nothing like the cushy existence kids have now. I had zero pocket money. Not “very little” — literally none. Picture my elementary and middle school years. My parents weren’t completely against giving me money, but occasionally handing me one or five yuan was already the biggest concession. Going out to buy a shaobing or a youtiao egg pancake counted as a fancy purchase. I had no money of my own to buy what I wanted. I used to envy friends who had their own wallets and allowances, who could just buy stuff. Me? Anything I wanted had to go through parental approval. Sure, I only wanted things like Mini 4WD cars, but obviously my parents weren’t going to buy them on a whim. Back then a pirated “Auldey” car cost 10 yuan, and I only had 1-2 yuan in coins. Out of reach. “Man, if only I had ten yuan.” That was my wish. Simple, direct, pure.

Butterfly Seeker came out early this year, so naturally in the back half of the year they put out Butterfly Seeker: Chaos Nightmare, billed as its fan disc. Usually a game that sells well gets an FD, and sometimes a game that sells like shit gets one too — making a visual novel isn’t expensive, the worst that happens is the voice actors get tired, everything else is copy-paste. Why not squeeze some money out? Going by the other titles from this brand… (yes, I’m looking at you, Kage no Umi no Apeiria), the FD should just be a little slice-of-life sideshow with no real connection to the main plot, lower quality than the main story, maybe giving a route to a heroine who didn’t get one, maybe just shooting the shit. In short, a cash-grab riding on nostalgia. No reason to expect much. But Butterfly Seeker: Chaos Nightmare genuinely brings a lot of surprises.