I’m not going to mix words with this month’s update; it’s going to be 95% primarily focused on video games and not much else. The reason being is because as a whole, March was filled with a lot of world news (recently in fact) that most people can’t stop talking about. And because I try my best to insulate this site from all of that, it’s near impossible to find the “good” stuff that I usually can share around the internet without running into a wall of commentary on subjects I have zero interest in. So what little I can talk about this month, I’ll do my best to make it as thorough and entertaining as possible. I promise next month’s update will be more diverse; hopefully as long as the world can just calm down for 2 seconds.

While doing my best to come up with stuff to talk about this month, I came across a YouTube channel called TokyoLens which has a lot of fascinating videos on various Japanese topics. Without diving into only pop culture related things, it was refreshing to see content that revolved around oddities and weird stuff that had to do with day to day life. Leave it Japan to make mundane things seem rather uplifting. So I’m going to be recommending a few videos from the channel your way with what I found interesting.

I’ve spoken upon the death of traditional arcades for quite some time now, and I’m not a “doomer” by any sense of the imagination. I’ve long accepted that time marches onward, the world keeps turning, and things change for better and worse. Still I am a sentimental fool for the days long gone, and the slow decline of arcades is a topic I revisit once in a while to see the progress of it all as it unfolds. Japan has always been the last bastion of traditional arcades, and even then the country has been slowly closing down its iconic game centers on a yearly basis. The following video will highlight some of the most dramatic closures of recent times, and even though the video itself is not even a year old - I’ve heard on the grapevine that even more places have closed since the start of this year (2022). Either way if you’re too young to know what an arcade is or too old to care anymore and have moved on with your life, I invite you to take a look at a “thing” that was once at the center of gaming culture.

I recently got into (and finished) my participation in the Nikke Closed Beta test I mentioned in my last mini post. The audio portion of the blog has the significant details of my adventures in it, but for brevity let’s just say I’m now even more hyped for this game after having my hands on it for a week. For everyone who just wants my impressions on it, the vided posted below by YouTuber SeanB mimics my sentiments about the game exactly. So in other words, he’s already done the work for me so I don’t have to. For the few folks that asked questions in my AMA post about the game, I’ll be answering them in detail on the audio portion of the blog. I have A LOT to say about this game, but not much to write about it since it would take an incredible amount of effort to get into writing all the little nuances of thought. So in other words, take a listen to the audio portion if you really care about Nikke at all.

Although Nikke is going to probably eat up all my time once it releases, there are still other games on the horizon that seem to hold promise. One of those games recently went into closed beta called Alice Fiction and there is a webiste you can visit for more information here. Video from some folks playing the CBT are below as well.

That’s it for this very (admittingly) strange update for April! Since it’s Easter month, I need to make sure to include some type of bunny or rabbit. So here’s Carrot from One Piece!