According to phoronix, BFQ’s performance pretty much exceeds expectations. And according to CNX Software, the latest kernels improved BFQ’s performance even further while fixing a bunch of issues.
So let’s try turning this thing on.
Purumai Wars (プラマイウォーズ) is an Asa Project game from 2015. Its position in the Asa Project catalog is honestly kind of awkward — it landed right in the middle of a transition period, where they hadn’t fully given up on the gag humor and the crazy facial expressions yet, but were also trying to lean a bit more into pure romance.
That said, the older sister’s route in the base game is still decent, and as far as I remember, Asa Project is one of those rare “conscientious porting houses” — when their games get ported to all-ages handheld platforms, they generally not only promote existing side characters to heroines but also add entirely new character routes, and the new characters’ VAs tend to be “whatever anime voice actor is hot right now.” That’s a fair amount of effort.
Some examples:
Renai 0 Kilometer PSP version: promotes two heroines, adds two more, voiced by Kana Asumi and Yukari Tamura respectively.
Hitotsu Tobashi Renai PSV version: adds two heroines, voiced by Ayane Sakura and Sakura Tange.
Which brings us to the game we’re talking about here:
Puramai Wars V: promotes one heroine, adds one more, voiced by Aya Suzaki.
Looking at how much effort went into these ports, you can see the official releases getting lazier and lazier — and this game is lazier still.
I needed something on the dining table to check the time, so I went with the Mi Home temperature and humidity e-ink clock.
The reasoning was simple: it looks good, and it’s supposedly E Ink, which is, like, insanely cool.
Needed something at home to listen to music, so I decided to buy a network speaker.
Honestly, I know the best in this category is the Apple HomePod. But nobody in my house uses Apple devices except my wife, and I’m an Android guy, so buying it was obviously unrealistic.
Ended up going with Sonos, and I had solid reasons for choosing Sonos:
Usually with games like this I write a first-person piece, make up some story, and call it a day.
But this game genuinely put me off doing that. If I wrote it that way, I’d end up sounding like a rapist myself. That said, even though this one looks like plain nukige, it’s the same as that earlier title from the same label — “even a nukige can have something under the surface.”
So let’s focus on what’s under the surface. Games rarely touch on this kind of criminal motive / psychology stuff.
The protagonist is a guy living alone in the big city. He goes to school, works part-time, and supports himself. Now and then he tutors his distant relative’s younger cousin; at school he’s polished, polite, well-mannered — by any measure, a “fine young man of the new era.”
Then one day his little sister from back home shows up. She says she’s planning to take the entrance exam for a school in his city and needs a place to stay over winter break, so she wants to crash at his place.
The moment he hears this, he gets angry. Every trace of the “fine young man” evaporates.
He even calls home and asks why the hell they had to send this burden his way.
The same thought repeats in his head:
“I hate my little sister more than anything!”
A few years back, Asa Project’s games seemed to have lost their way. Their stuff used to be all about the laughs, and nearly every release had that one character with the insane facial expressions. Then something changed—no idea what they were smoking—and the games started getting more restrained, pivoting to all these “searching for pure love” themes, like the earlier 三角恋爱 and 寄宿恋爱. But no matter how they went about it, those games just felt off to me. It’s like some guy who’s normally a total goofball, never serious for a second, suddenly sits you down and gets all earnest—what even is that? Some kind of advanced dark comedy?
And the two Asa Project games before this weren’t all that great either. They just threw out a premise — either a love triangle or a cohabitation setup — with nothing really noteworthy underneath. Take away that half-baked premise and I don’t think it’d change much. On top of that, the “face-meme king” that used to be the main selling point has had its presence steadily erased, and it hurts to watch a label that once had real character turn more and more into “just another face in the crowd.”
And it doesn’t stop there. Asa Project’s game titles have gotten lazier and lazier too — they just slap an adjective in front of “koi” and call it a day. What kind of idiot work puts “this one’s a love triangle” and “this one’s a boarding-school romance” right in the title? Even White Album didn’t pull that. Did you guys just give up on naming things?
And then 2019 rolls around and the title gets even more blatant: “恋愛、借りちゃいました.” Just look at it. Does that read like a proper “title” to you? It’s a whole sentence, and it’s got this painfully awkward punctuation mark stuffed in the middle. What the hell! Have you ever seen a work named something like I, Ate My Fill, You, Farted, or She, Crossdressed?
This is one of the few games where the title alone was enough to make me not want to play it. But because I was bored out of my mind, I figured I’d give it a look anyway — and it turned out… this game is actually surprisingly good?!
You could say that. Title aside from being dumb as hell, this game at least has clawed back a good chunk of the level of Renai 0 Kilometer. We’re happy Asa Project finally figured out what kind of “reinvention” it actually wanted.
I’ve been eating fried eggs for breakfast so often lately that I’m getting sick of them, so I decided to add some stuff.
I’ve been using this LinkSys WRT1900AC for ages, no idea how many years now. The router itself works fine, stability is basically unstoppable, it just doesn’t do much.
LinkSys officially announced OpenWRT support for it, and the OpenWRT wiki has always said so, but the wiki also says the open-source firmware has a weak 5G signal, so I never bothered.
Time passes though, OpenWRT is LEDE now, and I still hadn’t flashed it on the WRT1900AC. Recently I wanted to set up some magic internet access, and after looking around I found the firmware for the WRT1900AC has matured a lot, so I decided to give it a shot.
CLOCKUP is back, and Kono Tatsuya is back too. After that last game about “wolves and sheep,” the two have joined forces again for a new title.
Though honestly I think CLOCKUP carries more weight here… Kono Tatsuya? Who even are you?
The game is called DEAD DAYS. The initial promo material reminded me of a certain well-known manga and its adaptation, “Highschool of the Dead” — my head was full of images of “zombies running wild in the streets while the protagonist and his group keep fleeing.” Then I opened the game and cleared it, and I had to slap my thigh and shout:
“Damn, I got played!”
Strictly speaking this isn’t a “zombie apocalypse survival game” at all. It’s more of a “petty thug goes straight” game, dressed up in a slightly sci-fi coat at most.
Recently I noticed that after plugging the official LAN Adaptor into my laptop (a ThinkPad X1 Carbon 2017), the system didn’t show a new LAN connection. Instead it said “device not managed.”
Took me forever to find the fix.