So 100 days of gaming officially kicked off for me on Thursday, July 27th. You've heard not a peep about it, and with good reason. Thursday was also the first day of the Replay FX Arcade and Gaming Festival. Suffice to say, I definitely did my share of gaming for those four days. From Pinball to a veritable smorgasbord of arcade machines and retro consoles, there was plenty to keep a gamer busy, and I sampled what I could in small doses.
My real reason for being there though, was Extra Life. We put in long hours to speak to attendees - a real challenge when one is contending with the epic sounds of a thrash metal band who plays exclusively game music. I'd call the Festival a marginal success, but it's becoming apparent that we've nearly reached critical mass given the amount of people who stopped by to tell us they were already registered at our earlier events this year.
All in all, the event left me drained, and somewhat depressed that our ending numbers were so subdued in comparison to last year. As I've mentioned on this blog before, depression is a heck of a thing, and sometimes I just need to withdraw a little. So there it is. While I've spent my first couple of weeks of the #100daysofgaming relatively silent in terms of this blog, I have at least been playing and making some progress in FFIV when I can pull myself away from Final Fantasy XIV Online long enough - A challenge in an of itself. But hey - I promised 100 days of Final Fantasy, so XIV still counts, right?
All that aside, I did manage to jump back into Final Fantasy IV, and have once again made more progress than I ever have before. It began slowly. I booted up the PSP that had remained untouched for nearly a year, and immediately found myself clueless as to my whereabouts geographically, and story wise.
Thankfully, my beloved husband was there to help with at least my location, which was incidentally the Dwarven realm, though my next task still took some confused trial and error. I spent most of my first several hours back trying to determine whether or not I had finished the Sealed Cave.
Ostensibly, it was done, and yet, Joe's questions about whether or not I'd defeated a boss were met only by my blank stares. I'd made it to the bottom of the dungeon, yes, but there was no boss, no crystal chamber...
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| Also... this happens a lot... |
Now unimpeded in my forward progress, I finished up that little debacle and promptly cursed at the screen when Python (yes, everything is as it was last year - names and all) was once again seduced by the dark side. Because Final Fantasy is basically Star Wars.
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| What? Yeah! Ok... |
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| I am your father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate. |
Next we traipsed about the Under-dark (I've been playing too much D&D) for a while longer and paid a visit to Ruby's pals in the town of monsters. Ashura and Leviathan were troublesome to say the least. Mostly it's my fault. Since I've returned to the game, it's seemingly been nothing but boss fight after boss fight. Yes, I know those two summons are optional, so I didn't really have to subject myself to such pain, but whatever. I done did it anyway.  |
| Fact. Hooded figures are perfectly trustworthy innkeepers. |
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| Because apparently back then they had ships that could do that. |
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| WTT severed rodent appendage, for rare and priceless ore. |
Now all that was left was a trip over to Mysidia to pick up the Starwhal(TM). I mean... the lunar whale. It's got crystals that you can talk to. "It's a whale of a spaceship..." Ahem.
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| *spaceship noises* |
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| We like the Moooon! |
