*beep beep BEEP* Your call could not be completed as dialed. 555-THE-PAST is still unnamed.
Welp, the fact that it's actually 2020 - THE 2020, the year my childhood self was always waiting for - felt pretty surreal for about a week or so. But 2020 quickly went from being a "Vegas Stakes Renaissance" to feeling just like any other recent year: full of me worrying about Internet drama and the possibility of Internet stuff I wanted to see going down.
I don't want to know how I'm going to end up feeling if 2020 ends up being a bad year overall for me. I've been waiting for this year for my entire life (well, except for that period when I all but forgot Vegas Stakes was a thing). I'm LITERALLY in the future, according to my childhood. I need this year to be worth the wait!
So here's a list of some things I'm hoping to do this year, in no particular order, in an attempt to make 2020 a good year for me overall:
1) My decision to revisit Vegas Stakes after all these years also gave me the idea to revisit OTHER games that I also haven't thought about or played in a long time. In particular, I really want to play all of these games at least once this year, if I can:
- Wheel of Fortune for the SNES. I've mentioned how Vegas Stakes was probably my second-favorite SNES game after Super Mario World - well, Wheel of Fortune was probably third. But just like Vegas Stakes, it's been forever since I actually played it since I usually didn't have as much interest in revisiting it as I had in revisiting SMW.
- Sorry! for Windows 95. I've mentioned before how I thought about that game and how I haven't played it in such a long time - well, now's the perfect time to revisit it! Problem is, I need to figure out how to set up a Windows 95 emulator.
- Chip's Challenge and Chip's Challenge 2. In 2017 I finally found out that Chip's Challenge 2 had finally been released two years earlier, so that made me decide to replay the original and finally play the new one. However, I decided I wanted to finally beat the original before I started on the sequel... only to get about halfway through and then get sidetracked by having to fix LJ stuff or something. This seems like a good time to finally finish that!
- ClueFinders. I used to play ClueFinders 3rd and 4th Grade Adventures, and later, 6th Grade Adventures, but I don't think I ever completed any of them all the way through. I always wondered what was after however far I got in them. I also never had a chance to play the 5th grade one, so I always wondered what that one was about.
But apparently, I wasn't curious enough to consider replaying them, until last year when I'd seen one particular Homestar Runner Wiki user keep misspelling February as "Fleabruary" enough times for no discernible reason that I finally Googled it, ended up here, and was like "Oh yeah, I remember this!"
Problem is, not only do I not currently have copies of any of the ClueFinders games - not even the ones I used to own, I think - I'd, again, probably have to figure out how to set up a Windows 95 emulator.
(Also, now that I've seen Joni Savage for the first time in years, I've been wondering... Did I ever have a crush on her back when I first played the ClueFinders games? For some reason, she seems like the kind of girl that my 3rd-to-6th-grade self might have had a crush on, but on the other hand, if I did have a crush on her at some point, why would I forget about that? Is that weird?)
(Also also, according to the trivia on this page [spoiler warning], at some point in 6th Grade Adventures there's a music track that sounds like Enya's "Cursum Perficio". I wonder if that's actually true? How did I not know about that the first time I played it?)
(Also also also, it's strange to think I wouldn't know about most of this if a random HRWiki user hadn't kept misspelling February. The butterfly effect is weird. :P )
- Tetris Plus for PS1. Even though I never owned this game, and have only occasionally remembered that it existed in the past several years, and didn't even remember what it was called until I finally found it again within the past month or so, this game is strangely nostalgic for me for a couple of reasons:
a) I only ever knew about this game because I got to play it a couple of times at my cousin's house, around 2005, in the few years or so when my cousin lived at what used to be my grandmother's house. So, in a way, just as Vegas Stakes reminds me of being at her house, Tetris Plus reminds me of the last few times I ever got to be at that house. I can't believe even that era was so long ago now!
b) I always thought the professor's assistant was cute. In fact, come to think of it, the professor's assistant is probably the first video game character I've EVER had a major crush on (with the possible exception of Joni). Before Mary O., before Doctor Hurley, before Rosalina, before Illusen, before I even really knew what a crush is!
- Speaking of Doctor Hurley, it's been a long time since I played Brain Challenge. Considering all the stress I've been under lately, I probably need it now more than ever.
There's a few more games I haven't played in years and would like to revisit someday, but these are the main ones.
2) I haven't uploaded that many userpics lately... not counting minor variations like Matt1993 Nostalgia Month or April Fools 2018, I've only uploaded six new userpics in 2013-2019. That's mostly because I thought it would be a good idea to make a list of ALL of my ideas for userpics and post that in an entry so you all can vote on which ones you want me to make first.
That was a good idea back in 2009 when I only had like ten or eleven ideas for new userpics, but these days, that would be way too long for anyone to read. And my idea of formatting it as tables with sections for every fandom and columns for keyword, transcript, how much I think it's a good idea or not, etc., in an attempt to make it easier to read, probably would actually make it MORE difficult to read - and take way too long to make in the first place.
Also, it's occurred to me that there's not really much point in writing down my unfinished ideas for userpics, even for my own benefit - and in fact, NOT writing them down would help me decide what my best ideas are. The best ones would be the ones that I can remember even if they're not written down anywhere, while the ideas that I can't remember unless I write them down would most likely just become userpics that I'd rarely use because I forget they exist. Like the one on this entry, for instance.
So last month I decided I wanted to make at least one new userpic every month, but no more than three per month. No votes or anything - just the userpics I want to make and think I'll have a use for. And maybe I would put in a self-imposed rule about not making too many userpics from the same fandom in a row or something, so as not to over-centralize on any one fandom just in case I'm not as interested in it in the future.
Well, guess what? I already failed this goal because I didn't make one last month. Hopefully I'll still make more userpics this year anyway.
3) You know what'd make me more likely to upload new userpics? Finishing all those updates I've been wanting to do to my profile, the descriptions of my userpics (on DW these are kind of a mess right now, so I'm always reluctant to upload new userpics and therefore make it MORE of a mess), and what used to be my two sticky entries with my glossary and list of userpics. I really need to do that this year.
4) It's been a while since I posted any backups of my old Miiverse posts. I want to finish that this year. I'm not going to make up a consistent schedule like "once every two weeks" or something and pretend I can commit to it - at this point my goal is just to post all of them before the end of the year.
5) There's also still all the Flash cartoons I've never watched before but wanted to watch. Flash is being discontinued this year, so it's now or never. (Although slightly less so because there's an emulator now that may or may not be complete by the end of the year?)
6) Still gotta fix the rest of my entries. I'm not too concerned about this now since I've already fixed all the ones from before I joined DW, but it'd still be nice to know that ALL of them are the way I want them to look or as close as possible.
I don't want to know how I'm going to end up feeling if 2020 ends up being a bad year overall for me. I've been waiting for this year for my entire life (well, except for that period when I all but forgot Vegas Stakes was a thing). I'm LITERALLY in the future, according to my childhood. I need this year to be worth the wait!
So here's a list of some things I'm hoping to do this year, in no particular order, in an attempt to make 2020 a good year for me overall:
1) My decision to revisit Vegas Stakes after all these years also gave me the idea to revisit OTHER games that I also haven't thought about or played in a long time. In particular, I really want to play all of these games at least once this year, if I can:
- Wheel of Fortune for the SNES. I've mentioned how Vegas Stakes was probably my second-favorite SNES game after Super Mario World - well, Wheel of Fortune was probably third. But just like Vegas Stakes, it's been forever since I actually played it since I usually didn't have as much interest in revisiting it as I had in revisiting SMW.
- Sorry! for Windows 95. I've mentioned before how I thought about that game and how I haven't played it in such a long time - well, now's the perfect time to revisit it! Problem is, I need to figure out how to set up a Windows 95 emulator.
- Chip's Challenge and Chip's Challenge 2. In 2017 I finally found out that Chip's Challenge 2 had finally been released two years earlier, so that made me decide to replay the original and finally play the new one. However, I decided I wanted to finally beat the original before I started on the sequel... only to get about halfway through and then get sidetracked by having to fix LJ stuff or something. This seems like a good time to finally finish that!
- ClueFinders. I used to play ClueFinders 3rd and 4th Grade Adventures, and later, 6th Grade Adventures, but I don't think I ever completed any of them all the way through. I always wondered what was after however far I got in them. I also never had a chance to play the 5th grade one, so I always wondered what that one was about.
But apparently, I wasn't curious enough to consider replaying them, until last year when I'd seen one particular Homestar Runner Wiki user keep misspelling February as "Fleabruary" enough times for no discernible reason that I finally Googled it, ended up here, and was like "Oh yeah, I remember this!"
Problem is, not only do I not currently have copies of any of the ClueFinders games - not even the ones I used to own, I think - I'd, again, probably have to figure out how to set up a Windows 95 emulator.
(Also, now that I've seen Joni Savage for the first time in years, I've been wondering... Did I ever have a crush on her back when I first played the ClueFinders games? For some reason, she seems like the kind of girl that my 3rd-to-6th-grade self might have had a crush on, but on the other hand, if I did have a crush on her at some point, why would I forget about that? Is that weird?)
(Also also, according to the trivia on this page [spoiler warning], at some point in 6th Grade Adventures there's a music track that sounds like Enya's "Cursum Perficio". I wonder if that's actually true? How did I not know about that the first time I played it?)
(Also also also, it's strange to think I wouldn't know about most of this if a random HRWiki user hadn't kept misspelling February. The butterfly effect is weird. :P )
- Tetris Plus for PS1. Even though I never owned this game, and have only occasionally remembered that it existed in the past several years, and didn't even remember what it was called until I finally found it again within the past month or so, this game is strangely nostalgic for me for a couple of reasons:
a) I only ever knew about this game because I got to play it a couple of times at my cousin's house, around 2005, in the few years or so when my cousin lived at what used to be my grandmother's house. So, in a way, just as Vegas Stakes reminds me of being at her house, Tetris Plus reminds me of the last few times I ever got to be at that house. I can't believe even that era was so long ago now!
b) I always thought the professor's assistant was cute. In fact, come to think of it, the professor's assistant is probably the first video game character I've EVER had a major crush on (with the possible exception of Joni). Before Mary O., before Doctor Hurley, before Rosalina, before Illusen, before I even really knew what a crush is!
- Speaking of Doctor Hurley, it's been a long time since I played Brain Challenge. Considering all the stress I've been under lately, I probably need it now more than ever.
There's a few more games I haven't played in years and would like to revisit someday, but these are the main ones.
2) I haven't uploaded that many userpics lately... not counting minor variations like Matt1993 Nostalgia Month or April Fools 2018, I've only uploaded six new userpics in 2013-2019. That's mostly because I thought it would be a good idea to make a list of ALL of my ideas for userpics and post that in an entry so you all can vote on which ones you want me to make first.
That was a good idea back in 2009 when I only had like ten or eleven ideas for new userpics, but these days, that would be way too long for anyone to read. And my idea of formatting it as tables with sections for every fandom and columns for keyword, transcript, how much I think it's a good idea or not, etc., in an attempt to make it easier to read, probably would actually make it MORE difficult to read - and take way too long to make in the first place.
Also, it's occurred to me that there's not really much point in writing down my unfinished ideas for userpics, even for my own benefit - and in fact, NOT writing them down would help me decide what my best ideas are. The best ones would be the ones that I can remember even if they're not written down anywhere, while the ideas that I can't remember unless I write them down would most likely just become userpics that I'd rarely use because I forget they exist. Like the one on this entry, for instance.
So last month I decided I wanted to make at least one new userpic every month, but no more than three per month. No votes or anything - just the userpics I want to make and think I'll have a use for. And maybe I would put in a self-imposed rule about not making too many userpics from the same fandom in a row or something, so as not to over-centralize on any one fandom just in case I'm not as interested in it in the future.
Well, guess what? I already failed this goal because I didn't make one last month. Hopefully I'll still make more userpics this year anyway.
3) You know what'd make me more likely to upload new userpics? Finishing all those updates I've been wanting to do to my profile, the descriptions of my userpics (on DW these are kind of a mess right now, so I'm always reluctant to upload new userpics and therefore make it MORE of a mess), and what used to be my two sticky entries with my glossary and list of userpics. I really need to do that this year.
4) It's been a while since I posted any backups of my old Miiverse posts. I want to finish that this year. I'm not going to make up a consistent schedule like "once every two weeks" or something and pretend I can commit to it - at this point my goal is just to post all of them before the end of the year.
5) There's also still all the Flash cartoons I've never watched before but wanted to watch. Flash is being discontinued this year, so it's now or never. (Although slightly less so because there's an emulator now that may or may not be complete by the end of the year?)
6) Still gotta fix the rest of my entries. I'm not too concerned about this now since I've already fixed all the ones from before I joined DW, but it'd still be nice to know that ALL of them are the way I want them to look or as close as possible.