April 2020 Report (Patreon)

In the wise words of Mario... 

Hoo boy, this month was crazy for me as the first of my two-month rush to finish my remaining university assignments for the semester. But there's still stuff to talk about!

A History of Nintendo's Hong Kong Releases 

This month's video has been received extremely well! I'm surprised a lot of people were this interested by the topic, especially with that Cantonese bit at the beginning.

While the idea for an April Fools video where I speak in Chinese has been around for a year or so, I've been wanting to talk a little about Nintendo of Hong Kong for a while now. Back in 2016 I made an experimental video where I sort of did an unscripted ramble about the controversy surrounding The Pokémon Company's decision to unify the different Chinese name translations for the Pokémon series across China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Since then, the idea of talking more about Nintendo of Hong Kong (specifically their weird 3DS release cycles at the time) lingered at the back of my mind until I finally figured to use this year's video as a way of doing so.

Despite being a Hong Kong native, I had to do quite a bit of research as all of the game consoles I own were Japanese or American imports, and I had no clue about Nintendo's previous history in Hong Kong, or even if there was any. Thankfully quite a few nice folks helped me out on that front! There are probably some underground local communities in Hong Kong that are very knowledgeable about the histories of releases in the area, but I'm sadly not a part of one of them...like I said, the majority of folks I interact with online aren't from around here.

Overall though, this is a topic I thoroughly enjoyed learning about! There are probably bits of info I missed (heck, someone contacted me with some additional info that I've added to the pinned comment of the video), but it was cool to finally demystify my perceptions of Nintendo's previous presence in Hong Kong! And of course, know how to keep an eye out for older Hong Kong releases. :P

Famicom 3D System Video

It's that time of month again...

I feel like I owe a bit of an apology for mentioning how this video would be released closer to the April 1st video...seeing that it's May now. I don't think I did guarantee an April release back in that March update video, but as a sort of compensation, I released a public preview of the video. And there's definitely a lot of interest in it!

Unfortunately, as much as I would love to finish the editing job, I became occupied by the sheer amounts of assignments I had to hand in by the end of May. I'm churning my way through them, and I've still got a handful of research papers and some animation work to finish. The occasional free time I've got between assignments was admittedly used to unwind in Animal Crossing, because that's probably the one thing keeping me sane during all this, but with the reception to the public preview and all these future video ideas popping up in my head, I deep down really can't wait to finish the video. I need to tell you all how the Rad AK arc concludes.

I'd say to look forward to the final video this month...but I don't want to make further promises with the uncertainty of things, although more previews would certainly seem to be possible! Though once again, I sincerely apologize for the further delay.

Future Things

Some academic work won't stop me from thinking about future video ideas!

While $2+ patrons can check out the full list of ideas I have in the #youtube-schedule channel of my Discord server, here are some of the ideas that I might decide to tackle next after the Famicom 3D System video.

3DS AR Games

I replayed some of the 3DS AR minigames recently in a private stream with friends, and it really got me thinking about how forward-thinking the AR tech in the 3DS was, seeing how it is now almost a standard feature in smartphones and such. Despite being bundled software with the system, the AR Cards have actually largely been forgotten or simply remained as memories in most 3DS players, which makes it a prime video subject!

...I just realized I'd also have to take a look at other 3DS games that supported AR cards, huh? This is gonna be another large(ish) project, isn't it...

Cooking Mama Cookstar

Yes, I bought a (used) copy of Cooking Mama Cookstar and have streamed it on Twitch. Back when I first obtained it I mentioned I may make a video on it, but you might already know conventional reviews aren't exactly my thing, and lots of other YouTubers have already rushed in to capitalize on the controversy surrounding the game's release.

To have a more thorough look on the game itself and its history, I would have to look at the publisher who obtained the Cooking Mama license for the game, Planet Digital. They're actually a recently-founded publishing company with the initial intent of actually funding game development through blockchain technology! At least...that's what current info seems to suggest to me, and I have to do a lot more research about that and the other games they've released. A comprehensive look at this mysterious Cooking Mama game is definitely my end goal here. Maybe look forward to more streams of it in the future.

And that's it for April! From the bottom of my heart, thank you once again for sticking around, for both the April Fools special and my upcoming projects! There's still a rough time ahead, but when all is said and done I just want to keep working on things that so many people enjoy. You guys are the best!