Year in Review: 2024
Dec. 31st, 2024 08:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freshfeelingGiven that this blog started in March 2023, this was the first "normal" year; considerably more ordinary than last year. The write-up backlog had been eradicated! Although that's wonderful, it also means there was a lot less new material and that's a trend that will continue.
I also started Gloomhaven (Steam) with Classic Jobs, and didn't finish that but I expect that it's the kind of thing I'll want to go back to every so often. I actually played a little bit further than I've documented so far but not enough for another update, so I've got a few extra screenshots and shorthand notes lying around.
Steam tends to get me wrong because not only do my kids use my Steam account from time-to-time but they've been known to just... leave games running and wander away. That hasn't happened to such an absurd extent as last year, but it's still noteworthy because I never actually played Goat Simulator.
Apparently I only played Gloomhaven during June, and only played Final Fantasy III during October. That's not really surprising but it looks funny.
The "fun fact" shown about Gloomhaven is kind of a funny dig at the game... that, as a former physical Gloomhaven player, I deeply appreciate.
What does Nintendo have to say?
These stats can also be somewhat inflated by my children. Vampire Survivors and Peglin are both games where my kids occasionally play on my profile because I have more things unlocked, and thus many of these hours can be attributed to them. The same can be said of Minecraft, actually, because I paid for the Bedrock Version download of Stampy's Lovely World and didn't realize it was strictly associated with my account rather than my device (whoops). Consequently these hours are a little bit useless.
That said... the top three games listed there probably were my top 3 most-played Switch games this year. I had forgotten that I had spent so much time with Animal Crossing, but there was a period where my oldest son got me playing that regularly again during the Summer. Vampire Survivors I just keep going back to - mostly with my kids - every time a new update drops. And Peglin grabbed my interest in the August Nintendo Direct and I spent a lot of time with it this Fall.
Naturally, in January, I spent the most time on Final Fantasy VII!
All of the time I spent on airplanes is actually when I wrote most of the content for my User Generated Content article series, where posting them was just deferred either arbitrarily or because I wanted to source some screenshots and such. This year I discussed Stunts, OS/2, WarCraft II and other topics in this series. Getting some of these things running in 2024 was actually really tricky! I didn't even really bother with legit screenshots for the Civilization II entry.
This year was also the year that the Super Mario Maker servers shut down, and when I wrote about Super Fresh 2⌒3 World. Since I wrote about that, a fellow named AllonBachuth contacted me about the super world I made with my kids and offered some constructive advice. I was actually quite honoured by this, because AllonBachuth was the creator of the "Every Level is 5-2 BUT..." super world that DGR played in early 2024, which was of excellent quality. Honestly, our super world could still use some tweaks. Perhaps if I get around to that I'll need another post about it.
Another thing I did with my kids was creating our own game, Mini Survivors for PICO-8, which you can download for free or play in your browser. I've been coding for nearly 30 years but my kids weren't well-initiated, and even with other things going on and a lot of parties and pool time we finished the whole thing within the month of July 2024. It was very cool for them to be involved in, but even I myself am pretty proud of it for my first game for that platform. It may have actually opened the floodgates, as my youngest is frequently asking about what we'll make next.
There are other little bits making this year interesting in terms of my job and family but I think this is a pretty good summary as far as this site is concerned.
I still might do some of the ideas I had listed from last year. I did a bunch of analysis of Lufia 1 but the hacking tools for that game aren't robust, so it might involve finding some memory addresses and doing it with a script instead. That's more coding that I want to do right now, but I do think it would actually be a more interesting playthrough since that game has really muddy character archetypes (notably, healing is ubiquitous). Breath of Fire sounded like a good idea but the coding of that game seems like a bit of a nightmare to work with and I'm not sure how I would go about it.
The Valkyrie Profile one sounds the most fun to me right now, because I love that game and I haven't played it in a while, and I think it could do it with just a couple of GameShark codes.
It's not lost on me that 3 of my 5 finished variant playthroughs this year are things that popped up from the Four Job Fiesta community! I am quite flexible with the types of things I'll end up playing and documenting. It turns out two of the playthroughs from this year actually were from my list, but they weren't the ones I mentioned, and the other ones were just... things that came up that seemed fun and attainable.
I also think it's pretty likely that I'll end up coding another game with my kids over the summer, maybe for PICO-8 or maybe not.
I would be pleased for anyone reading this to connect via BlueSky, Discord or even GameFAQs which is still sputtering along somehow.
I had a great year! One of the best of my life, really. I hope you had a good 2024, and I wish you the best for 2025.
Playthroughs Done in 2024
- Final Fantasy VII (Switch) with Classic Jobs:
This was a neat one in that it's based around one of RevenantKioku's challenges that are spin-offs of the Four Job Fiesta, but I sort of negotiated with him personally to get the party I needed to make this specific playthrough variant possible. I last did an FF7 challenge in 2022 and ran out of time, so I was very pleased to finish... and Cloud was very effective as a knight, especially after cheesing my stats. - Golden Sun (GBA) with No Swords:
This one I left out-of-order on the index because the run began on my Wii U in early 2020. I un-abandoned it because circumstances made it convenient to stream the rest of it, which was really just the last few hours (including Crossbone Isle). I had last played most of this game in roughly 2004 so revisiting it felt fresh and satisfying. That said, beating this game without using swords is actually pretty easy. - Final Fantasy VIII (PS) with Classic Jobs:
This was an unrecorded run that I actually ran using my Miyoo Mini. I don't like this game - and I wasn't shy about noting this in the write-ups - but this was actually a pretty novel and fun way to experience it. At the end of the fifth section I came to the accidental realization that this was just better. There's still a lot of dumb elements and some questionable gameplay design decisions but limitations on the party improve the battles, at least. - Final Fantasy III Pixel Remaster (Steam) Four Job Fiesta:
I had very little interest in doing this until I was bored on an October weekend: suddenly, it was time for FF3! This was as much about experiencing the Pixel Remaster series for the first time as it was about the challenge for me. That said, the challenge was good. I happened to get a fairly crappy team, and it took a long time to muddle through Garuda, but otherwise I had a lot of fun. - Chrono Trigger (SNES) Holiday Challenge:
I did this for the second year in a row, and used a lua script to force my team into every single battle in the game. Playing the game just a year apart and with a team whose only real shortcoming was mid-game healing made this very fast and easy... but I certainly still had a great time. Beating Retinite without water magic was cool.
I also started Gloomhaven (Steam) with Classic Jobs, and didn't finish that but I expect that it's the kind of thing I'll want to go back to every so often. I actually played a little bit further than I've documented so far but not enough for another update, so I've got a few extra screenshots and shorthand notes lying around.
System-Specific Year in Reviews from 2024
Nintendo and Steam each gave me a year-in-review thingie to share.Steam tends to get me wrong because not only do my kids use my Steam account from time-to-time but they've been known to just... leave games running and wander away. That hasn't happened to such an absurd extent as last year, but it's still noteworthy because I never actually played Goat Simulator.
Apparently I only played Gloomhaven during June, and only played Final Fantasy III during October. That's not really surprising but it looks funny.
The "fun fact" shown about Gloomhaven is kind of a funny dig at the game... that, as a former physical Gloomhaven player, I deeply appreciate.
What does Nintendo have to say?
These stats can also be somewhat inflated by my children. Vampire Survivors and Peglin are both games where my kids occasionally play on my profile because I have more things unlocked, and thus many of these hours can be attributed to them. The same can be said of Minecraft, actually, because I paid for the Bedrock Version download of Stampy's Lovely World and didn't realize it was strictly associated with my account rather than my device (whoops). Consequently these hours are a little bit useless.
That said... the top three games listed there probably were my top 3 most-played Switch games this year. I had forgotten that I had spent so much time with Animal Crossing, but there was a period where my oldest son got me playing that regularly again during the Summer. Vampire Survivors I just keep going back to - mostly with my kids - every time a new update drops. And Peglin grabbed my interest in the August Nintendo Direct and I spent a lot of time with it this Fall.
Naturally, in January, I spent the most time on Final Fantasy VII!
Other Achievements in 2024
I haven't discussed a lot of personal matters on this site, although I sometimes discuss personal goings-on in my streams, but this year was actually pretty interesting for me: I had an ongoing work project that culminated to several trips to the Caribbean and South America in the Spring! I am not a well-travelled person at all, so it was quite a novel and exciting experience for me... and it also might explain in part why there wasn't a whole lot of material such as variant gameplay from March through May.All of the time I spent on airplanes is actually when I wrote most of the content for my User Generated Content article series, where posting them was just deferred either arbitrarily or because I wanted to source some screenshots and such. This year I discussed Stunts, OS/2, WarCraft II and other topics in this series. Getting some of these things running in 2024 was actually really tricky! I didn't even really bother with legit screenshots for the Civilization II entry.
This year was also the year that the Super Mario Maker servers shut down, and when I wrote about Super Fresh 2⌒3 World. Since I wrote about that, a fellow named AllonBachuth contacted me about the super world I made with my kids and offered some constructive advice. I was actually quite honoured by this, because AllonBachuth was the creator of the "Every Level is 5-2 BUT..." super world that DGR played in early 2024, which was of excellent quality. Honestly, our super world could still use some tweaks. Perhaps if I get around to that I'll need another post about it.
Another thing I did with my kids was creating our own game, Mini Survivors for PICO-8, which you can download for free or play in your browser. I've been coding for nearly 30 years but my kids weren't well-initiated, and even with other things going on and a lot of parties and pool time we finished the whole thing within the month of July 2024. It was very cool for them to be involved in, but even I myself am pretty proud of it for my first game for that platform. It may have actually opened the floodgates, as my youngest is frequently asking about what we'll make next.
There are other little bits making this year interesting in terms of my job and family but I think this is a pretty good summary as far as this site is concerned.
Plans for 2025
Last year, I wrote that I had a list of well over 30 ideas. The ones I ended up actually listing in my Year in Review for 2023 were Breath of Fire Classic Jobs, Lufia & The Fortress of Doom Classic Jobs, Star Ocean 2 Classic Jobs, Valkyrie Profile Classic Jobs, Phantasy Star IV Gratitude Challenge Redux, Final Fantasy 1 with Blue Mages, and Final Fantasy 1 Monster Party. Well... I did zero of those. Whoops.I still might do some of the ideas I had listed from last year. I did a bunch of analysis of Lufia 1 but the hacking tools for that game aren't robust, so it might involve finding some memory addresses and doing it with a script instead. That's more coding that I want to do right now, but I do think it would actually be a more interesting playthrough since that game has really muddy character archetypes (notably, healing is ubiquitous). Breath of Fire sounded like a good idea but the coding of that game seems like a bit of a nightmare to work with and I'm not sure how I would go about it.
The Valkyrie Profile one sounds the most fun to me right now, because I love that game and I haven't played it in a while, and I think it could do it with just a couple of GameShark codes.
It's not lost on me that 3 of my 5 finished variant playthroughs this year are things that popped up from the Four Job Fiesta community! I am quite flexible with the types of things I'll end up playing and documenting. It turns out two of the playthroughs from this year actually were from my list, but they weren't the ones I mentioned, and the other ones were just... things that came up that seemed fun and attainable.
I also think it's pretty likely that I'll end up coding another game with my kids over the summer, maybe for PICO-8 or maybe not.
In Conclusion...
It is funny to think that as 2023 ended, BlueSky was still emerging and invite-only! It had enormous growth this year because of all the stupidity and became rather mainstream.I would be pleased for anyone reading this to connect via BlueSky, Discord or even GameFAQs which is still sputtering along somehow.
I had a great year! One of the best of my life, really. I hope you had a good 2024, and I wish you the best for 2025.
