Pulling An All-Nighter

I would really rather not, but I seem to have put myself into a situation where I kind have to regardless of want to or not.

This whole pandemic mess we're in has had some unfortunate impacts on everybody, myself included. Somwhere in the course of this last year or so, my sleep cycle has been messed up to the point that I find myself up until 3 AM or later on a far too regular basis, and it's not doing me any good on a lot of fronts. I think I know what to do to fix that, and that means pulling an all-nighter here, since I've got a day off. As I was saying before the jump, I'd really rather not, but I seem to have put myself into a place where I don't have much other choice, so I may as well try to fix it on a day when I can afford to be a little groggy. With that in mind, it's time to break out the coffee and the writing music and maybe get some of that done for a change. With any luck, between the hard reset and being a writer for a change again, I'll be able to get myself back on a better sleep schedule.

The music I'm writing to this fine morning comes courtesy of a YouTube channel called Kaymart Raydio, which has a selection of the in-store music and commercial tracks played in various Kmart stores over the years, mostly the 80s and 90s, from what I've noticed. The coffee, at least to begin with, is just the generic store brand from my local grocery store. I've got some vanilla flavored Dunkin' Donuts stuff I might do later, depending on how I'm feeling and the need for more caffene, which I'm pretty sure is just as bad for me as the borked sleep schedule. There's also going to be a little stream-of-consciousness stuff going on here, since that's kind of what this kind of post is about.

For starters, I'll start with a bit of kinda-sorta planning on the Text Play front. I think I'm in a place where I can get back to that on a more regular basis agan, which means there's a good chance I'll be knocking out at least one of the three I've got going on right now. At this point, I'm thinking it's going to be the one for the Chronicles version of Final Fantasy 4, simply because I know I'm closest to the end of that one, in no small part because I've been through that one about a million times. I know I've done it at least twice here on this blog.

With regard to the ones I've got going for FF2 and FF9, it's hard to say which one I'll get finished first or how long it'll take because they've both already gone on longer than I had thought they would, and, as always, there's IRL stuff that's going to take priority. Like I'll be saying in the Text Play chapter for FF2 that'll come up shortly after this, I know I'm coming up on the end of that, too, but I want to level a few spells up and get some other stats going, too. As for 9, it's hard to say. After all this time, I'm still only on Disk 3, and I'm not sure how long it's going to take to get to the actual end. Even after five years of trying on this last attempt, I'm still only as far as I made it the last time I got even close to finishing it.

As always, I've got a few ideas as to where I want to go after I get some of the other stuff I'm working on knocked out. For the gaming stuff, once I've given myself a bit of a cooldown from having three games going at once, I might actually try to go back to the very beginning of the whole Text Play thing I do here and have another shot at the very first game I tried to do one of: Breath of Fire. It's an interesting game and I've always enjoyed my attempts at getting through it. Better yet, I may not need my SNES to pull it off this time. See, I've been having a bit of trouble with it when I've tried to play Breath of Fire on it, so that was holding me back a bit. Now that I've got that Nintendo Switch I've been mentioning here and there, I've got an option of playing it on a virtual SNES console, which comes at no additional charge with a subscrioption to Nintendo's Switch Online subscription service. There's also an NES virtual console available. Maybe it's because I'm an oldschool gamer on a limited budget, but I've always thought the idea of such things was a little sketchy, even if it's difficult, if not downright impossible to play these things without one. Now that I've had a chance to poke around a bit on it, I'm getting a little more comfortable with the idea. There's always a chance that might change depending on how much else they have there that I might want to play. It would improve my feeling about it if I were to come across titles in the Lufia and Dragon Quest franchises, too. There are games in both those series that I'd like to finish once, or again, just for old time's sake.

I suppose I should talk about the Switch itself while I'm at it. It seems like a good system so far, but I've only had it for about three weeks as of this writing. I'm really enjoying the Animal Crossing game I got alongside it. For an island life simulator, it's way more fun than I thought it would be. It's certainly more fun to play than it is to watch other folks play in Let's Play videos or on game streaming services, since there's not much of a pre-defined story to speak of. I remember when I did my Text Play of Legend of Mana several years ago now. I started that off by describing it as a choose your own adventure game, which fits, of course, but there were also storylines that played out depending on what choices the player made. Pretty much all we get in these Animal Crossing games are Non-Player Characters who live on or visit the island and come to players with requests for items or help in picking locations of various shops and houses and the like. Still, there's something entertaining about having an NPC come to you with something like “Is that a perch in your pants or are you just happy to see me?”

Thing is, it's actually another series, also for the Switch, I think, that sold me on both the system and this sort of game. I think the Dragon Quest Builders series is for the Switch, anyway. There's this dude I've been following on YouTube for the better part of a decade, at least, now, who recently rebranded his channel as Seraph, though I still think of him as AppleGodZMG, who did Let's Plays of both Dragon Quest Builders and Bulders 2 that I really enjoyed when they came out. He also did one of Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which is kind of a mix of the games I've already mentioned and classic Legend of Zelda. Might give that a shot at some point, too.

There are also a few other games I'd like to give a shot, too. I know I've mentioned a few Mana games before, including the one above. There's a collection of those that came out for the Switch when it launched that caught my interest, and if I can still get it someplace, I just might.

There's also a collection of Spyro games that a Twitter buddy of mine is into that I might look into as well. I'm going to need a little more selling on because, as I understand, the Spyro games are platformers, and I wasn't particularly good at platforming games when I palyed them regularly. That's important because I really haven't played those regularly since I got out of high school 25 years ago. The hitch there is that I'll have to get with him on Skype, which is something I haven't done in far too long thanks to issues best not gotten into here. The bright news on that front is that I think I'm finally coming to a point where I can finally resolve that to some extent. Beyond that, I won't say any more.

One other thing I've been thinking about as I write this is video and streaming stuff. It's something I enjoy doing even if I really don't have the face or the voice for it. From what I've seen over the years, I'm apparently good enough at it to get regular viewers on YouTube, even if I don't put nearly enough time or effort into it. I've got things for at least a couple videos I could do, and maybe I'll finally get to them now that I'm resolving some of the IRL stuff I've had going on for awhile now.

I also liked doing live streaming shows, back when I used to do that. I haven't in years now because uStream stopped being an option for guys like me quite some time ago, YouTube just seemed like more work than I wanted to go to, and I really haven't had much inclination to look into other services since then. I've got a Twitch account that might work for that sort of thing, since I guess it's not entirely for gaming any more. I might look into that one day, when I think I've got the time and energy. That's another thing that's probably a ways out still, though. Still a few IRL things that need to be dealt with first.

But I think I'm going to wrap this up for now. I'm on page three of this and it's 5 AM, which means I've been writing away at this for at least 90 minutes, and probably longer. Like I was saying at the top of this post, though, the point of all this is that I really need to get my sleep schedule reset, and since I'm not getting to bed earlier like would be healthy for me, I'm going to do this instead, in hopes that skipping a night will set things a little straighter again. One thing I can say for sure is that this sort of thing was a lot easier when I was in collge, but then again, even that was 20 years ago now, and I'm not exactly what one might call young any more.

At any rate, it's time to wrap this up. I'll see you later with more, hopefully less rambly, stuff. See you soon, folks.