Introductory Post

Obligatory first post!

Anyway, this will be my blog where I talk about stuff not related to my real life. Aka video games, anime, random stuff about the Internet, and music. I actually do have a super sekrit blog where I talk about real life(not really, but it hasn't been updated in a few years).

Anyway, for those who don't know me, I go by the name Psylocke on fighting game forums. I graduated from UCLA in Spring 2009 with a Bachelors degree in Chemistry and am trying to find a job, because I have too much time on my hands! Hopefully that will change soon. In the meantime, I am just taking classes at a nearby community college hoping to retake classes that I didn't get a good grade in undergrad, or taking other classes that would be relevant to my career, but it's hard because I have the worst luck with registration dates.

About the name and the URL of this blog, it pertains to an anime series that is airing this season called B型H系(B Gata H Kei). This show is hilarious and I highly recommend everyone to watch it. The main character Yamada in this show is like a female version of myself, and one random night when I was talking to my friends about this, one of them mentioned that Yamada would be my persona. If you're not familiar with the Shin Megami Tensei: Persona series, a Persona is basically someone's true inner self, usually manifested in the form of a demon, angel, or mythological creature, and they're all associated with the various arcanas in a tarot card deck. There's a cool little explanation of them in the game which you can watch here. Anyway, if Yamada was my Persona, she would have to be in the Lovers arcana; thus, the name of this blog!

In my free time I like watching videos on Youtube and Nicovideo, listening to all sorts of music, and playing video games. I do watch anime or read manga occasionally but not really that often. I did have a phase during high school and the 1st year of college where I probably spent more than 3 hours every day watching anime episodes but that time has passed and I don't think I could ever do that anymore.

Videogames are not something new to me, as I basically grew up on platformers like the Megaman and Super Mario series. I still have my old NES in my house somewhere too. I also played a lot of RPGs later on, and still do today. Fighting games are actually pretty new to me, as I didn't grow up on Street Fighter II like most other people in the fighting game community did. I did go to the arcade a bit as a kid, but I wasn't allowed to play since I didn't have money so I just watched people. However, just watching people play was pretty fun in itself to see the different personalities of the players and the styles. The first game that I actually played competitively was Super Smash Bros. Melee for the Nintendo Gamecube. This was during my 1st and 2nd year of college, and it was also before the Youtube era so match videos were extremely hard to find. I think the only reliable website that had Melee match vids at the time was the Japanese Sheik/DK player Captain Jack's webpage. The only other way to get match vids was through DC++, so I spent a lot of time idling there and watching everything I could.

The first real fighting game I played was Guilty Gear XX, and I have to thank the UCLA arcade for that in giving me the first real exposure to the game. I remember my first visit there, and how amazed I was with how the game looked. At the time, GGXX wasn't even the most recent version of the game, as #Reload was already out, and it had a PC port, which was good for me since I didn't have any consoles. So I had a way to practice, unlike Smash where I didn't have a GameCube. This was during my 2nd year of college, making it around 2006, so I've been playing fighting games for about 4 years now. From there I branched into other fighting games.

Nowadays, I mainly play GGXX Accent Core. It's still my all-time favorite fighting game and I don't think I could ever get tired of playing it. I also play Melty Blood Actress Again on the side and a bit of Eternal Fighter Zero, which is an old but very underrated game.

Immaterial and Missing Power is a game that I tried to play for a while. I think the game is brilliant and it's very fun to watch, but it's much too difficult for me and I actually don't like the command interpreter in that game(and all other Tasofro games for that matter). Vampire Savior is another game that I tried to play for a while: it's very fun and fast paced, but there's nobody around me that plays it and the balance issues in that game really annoy me. Finally, there's Super Turbo, which is a hilarious game and really fun to watch. I don't think I will ever play it though.

Anywho, this was probably too long for an introductory post, so more later.