I ate hot and sour pork tripe plenty of times as a kid, but it was only today that I found out it’s actually a Henan dish.
True or not, as someone from Henan it felt pretty much mandatory to learn how to make one of the “Henan dishes.”
Win10 tablets are everywhere now, and honestly the specs aren’t bad. But Sony was already making this kind of device back around 2005.
I remember devices like this — at the very least I saw them in Popular Software. Though it was only ads and reviews, because this thing was expensive as hell, and back then even a desktop couldn’t meet the demands of DOOM3, let alone some overpriced, underpowered “crippled laptop.”
But as the old saying goes: “The swallows that once nested in the halls of the nobility now fly into the homes of common folk.” Even something that 14 years ago only the rich and flashy could afford has ended up in my hands.
Here I need to thank Duan Ye, a proud Hammer phone fan and man of means, for his support. Duan Ye’s passion for gadgets is full of craftsman spirit — born proud!
Tsuki Kiraboshi no Koi Iroha (絆きらめく恋いろは) looked like it had nothing going for it when it came out, but the sales ended up surprisingly good—and the reviews were really high too.
The high praise isn’t because the game itself is all that good, or because the main heroine is written all that well, or because the main story is all that great either…
It was because of the game’s second heroine — Tsubaki — who looked so cute and charming.
So what is Tsubaki’s route actually about? She’s the one holding her family’s biggest prestige and resources, yet she gets dunked on by every self-made striver, and in the end she barely preserves her own dignity. So what’s there to praise about this plot? But the masses just think Tsubaki is moe, is cute, and completely ignore the psychological portrayal and the stuff about effort and striving—the only parts of that route I actually found decent……
トニカクカワイイ — in other words, as long as it’s cute, that’s all that matters.
This is some absolute bullshit! Again! AGAIN! The story got beaten out by moege fluff!
And this time, to throw a bone to the moe-blob crowd, the game got a fandisc — the protagonist isn’t the original one, the route isn’t the original route, it’s… Tsubaki.
The game’s title even became Kizuna Kirameku Koi Iroha -Tsubaki Renka- (絆きらめく恋いろは －椿恋歌－).
The not-exactly-famous eroge developer LASS died for good in May 2018. Company president 剣技マナ said that after May 1st all business was transferred to DMM, and LASS’s main scenario writer LEGIOん went along to DMM too, getting involved in the development of a new title.
Then in the second half of the year, a new company, Fluorite, showed up — and with it, a new game: ソーサレス＊アライヴ! ～the World’s End Fallen Star～. In the credits list, we saw some familiar names: LEGIOん, and another familiar artist, 早川ハルイ.
Speaking of this “LEGIOん”, I actually had some interaction with him. His life didn’t seem to be going well. After LASS went under, he gave off a real drifting-along-with-the-current vibe — company gone, his mother passed away too, living like some ant-tier wage slave. I even hit him up on Twitter hoping he’d stay strong, and he actually replied to me. But what shocked me was……
He actually knows Chinese!
And the scarier part: he seems to have been following my Twitter for a while now… which means all those days I’ve been up there shit-talking, calling this developer a dumbass, calling that scenario writer a dumbass—he probably understood every word of it.
So when ソーサレス＊アライヴ! came out, I immediately went and shitposted about it on X (Twitter). For one thing, letting the producer find out I was playing a pirated copy would’ve been awkward. For another, telling the producer to his face that his game is garbage… that’s just rude, man.
So is this game actually shit or not?
At least that’s how it seemed from the trial version.
A while back I saw a story that caught my eye: a Taiwanese game called Shi Yong Xi Shao Nü got rejected from Steam for having too much porn and other objectionable content.
Not exactly breaking news, really. Everyone and their dog wants to get on Steam these days, including a whole lot of straight-up porn games and stuff that’s just skirting the line. Steam is a US platform run by white dudes, so that kind of child-endangerment material was always going to get the hammer.
So I looked into this Shi Yong Xi Shao Nü thing, and it turned out to be nothing like what I expected…
It looks like softcore, but the game itself isn’t a visual novel… or at least not that kind of eroge-style text game. There’s actual stuff to do.
To put it bluntly… it’s primarily a management sim. Which actually made me interested in it.
The dev is Taiwanese, though, and their official site banned all mainland IPs, and since Steam won’t take it, the game’s only sold on physical disc. I had no idea how I’d even play it…
But with a buddy’s help, I got my hands on a copy, so I started playing.
Dayglacia no Rashinban (デイグラシアの羅針盤) is a doujin game by the circle Catalyst, first released around 2015. In December 2018 it got a graphical upgrade, an OP2, and a port to Nintendo Switch.
The wife bought them, couldn’t cook them, so she dumped them on me…
I can’t cook them either, so I had no choice but to give it a shot.
A friend sent me an invite recently saying WeChat had rolled out an ETC module that lets you pay directly through WeChat, so I figured why not and applied for one.
The application fee is 100 yuan. What showed up is this thing.
My dad’s Redmi Note 3 developed a yellow blotch on the screen, so I bought a replacement on Taobao and did the swap myself.
Having torn this thing down before, the disassembly went smoothly enough. The screen replacement itself, though? An absolute pain in the ass.
I ordered a RhinoShield case on Black Friday when it was on sale, and then one thing led to another. After a bunch of tweaking, the phone feels pretty good to use now, basically satisfied, so I’ll sum it up here.
