8 jump rope challenge - kitten background

Dear Readers,

Today I unlocked another cat background, but this time it was a kitten. Very cute kitten with meowing noises.

The prize I got was flowers.

5 wii sports - boxing with low speed result

Dear Readers,

Today I did the fitness test and I needed the Nunchuck. This is for the boxing, which feels like it barely works at all. I kept punching the trainer in the face too. Ah well.

Then it was back to returning tennis balls, which is fun when you have no interruptions. Had a better time with this.

My result was a fitness age of 38 and with very low speed stat. The Brain Age/Training era was weird haha.

4 wii sports - fitness without interruptions

Dear Readers,

I played a couple more fitness sessions and it featured the returning balls game but didn't game over when I made a miss! It just gave me a certain number of balls to hit and I could hit or miss them as much as I could. I liked this a lot more than the standard returning balls game where you get a game over when you miss once. It's much better.

Hitting baseballs is another version of this and that's fun too. Again, no interruptions.

7 jump rope challenge - mossy mushroom background

Dear Readers,

Today I unlocked a mossy mushroom background. Continuing to jump made atmospheric echoing water drop sounds. Very nice.

I tried lowering the goal target but 100 is the lowest setting. I then checked what the highest setting was and it was 3000. Wow. Gonna stick with what I can do for now. I got a cake as a prize again.

3 wii sports - a single round of tennis and higher score in training

Dear Readers,

I couldn't do the fitness feature because the night before I played within the 24 hour timeframe, so I played a single game of tennis instead.

I was leading but the score was going 40-30 and I was worried about going to a deuce. I made a very fast serve by accident and won the match! Woo!

I did some tennis training as well with the endless serves and hitting targets. My scores for them now are 27 and 10, respectively.

2 super monkey ball: step & roll - first world with wii remote, talking about menus a little

Dear Readers,

I replayed the first world to feel that lovely music again, but I accidentally forgot to switch on the Wii Balance Board. The game doesn't prompt it, so it just assumed I was continuing with Wii Remote controls.

I continued anyway and played the levels with the added obstacles, since using the Wii Remote is much easier. I still had a good fun time, enjoying the music and dancing to it. Didn't have to worry about the Balance Board either. I also got a higher score, though a Wii Remote symbol appears next to it.

Being prompted and not prompted by menus in a game can be a powerful thing. I noticed it myself when I watched Tim Rogers on his actionbutton Twitch livestream recently, where he played SEGA Rally for SEGA Saturn in the time attack mode. He was able to just continue driving without being prompted by any menus or game overs. The clock just went ahead by itself as well. He drove many laps for quite a while and had a good time. He shared a story of talking about this game with a developer of Gran Turismo, a game series that has lots of menus and settings. There's food for thought.

6 jump rope challenge - another cat background

Dear Readers,

Today I unlocked another picture of a cat and got 2 big wedding-like cakes as a prize. I found that the picture appears when you reach the goal and it still appears when you continue. Maybe I should set the goal lower so that I can get the picture?

The cat picture is different to the one from the first day. It also meows when you skip! So imagine if I set the goal to half, which would mean I get 50 jumps in the void and 50 jumps with a cat picture and lots of meowing. That might be nice.

My right ankle also felt kinda weird so I slowed down. There might be a right way and wrong way of doing this. I'll feel it out.

1 super monkey ball: step & roll - world 1 music and skydiving

Dear Readers,

The tough times continue, so I'm trying to play more physical games that make me happy. This is a fantastic game that uses the Wii Balance Board.

I've played this before, and I wanted to return to playing the first world of the main game, which has lovely music, and the skydiving game, which is really beautiful.

I played through the first world without too much trouble and I was getting used to the control, which is generally very challenging. With this game I also worry about making big dancey, jerky movements, because I don't want to do any damage to the balance board.

The music in the first world is absolutely lovely and has a nice beat, and it's much more chill than the loud boisterous music in Banana Blitz, though I love the music in that game too.

When the credits roll, there's a minigame set to music from the first world, except this time there's singing. The first time I heard this was a very nice surprise and it always keeps me coming back to play it again.

In the skydiving game you have to lean to get into position and hold for a few seconds, before gliding joyfully through the air to the next target. It's not much but it makes me feel happy to play, so I was delighted after not playing for such a long time.

I haven't recorded any scores in these past couple of sessions... maybe I should.

2 wii sports - trying out the fitness feature

Dear Readers,

I tried out the fitness feature. This presented some bite sized tasks to do in the various sports. One was landing golf shots on the green, one was hitting tennis balls against wall targets, and another was hitting several baseballs being pitched.

This feels like a good single-player alternative. At the end of the session you get this table with different statistics in the shape of a triangle. Might get more data the more I do this.

5 jump rope challenge - carrot patch background

Dear Readers,

Today I got a carrot patch background. It's from the perspective of a very small animal with towering carrots behind me. There were sounds of nature like birds chirping as well. It's a nice scene.

I played in a different place too, which helped mix things up a little. There were sounds of real nature here, so I put my ear up against the Switch to make sure it was different sounds. Birdsong all around.

1 wii sports - i just want to hit a ball against a wall for a long time

Dear Readers,

I never played Wii Sports much. There was always so much for me to play on the Nintendo Wii that I never really needed the game, even though it was a big cultural phenomenon. 

I played it now though, because I'm going through a tough time and I had the fancy, the urge, the feeling that I wanted to hit a ball against a wall with a tennis racquet forever.

The tennis game seems like a good way to do this, but it's always framed like a game, with scores, prompts, game overs and menus.

You can do this training feature where you can return balls being endlessly served to you, but I kept hitting them out of bounds and getting game overs straight away. This was very annoying.

Eventually I sussed it was about the timing of hitting the ball, along with other aspects like swinging from left or right. I was able to get better scores then. I think my highest at the moment is 27.

There's another practice game where you try to hit targets. There's a wall and everything, but the wall crumbles when you miss the targets. It lasts for a while at least. Might play more later.

1 super monkey ball: banana blitz - first world, desert world, monkey squash and monkey race

Dear Readers,

It's tough times so I decided to play some games that make me feel happy. One of them is this Wii launch title. It's really hard but I wanted to play some specific levels and modes.

One thing I really wanted to do was to hit a ball against a wall with a tennis racquet. I found Monkey Squash.

This was really easy to play. I played Wii Sports tennis as well and found that to be much more difficult. More on that later. I just wanted to whack a ball against a wall forever and I was able to do it for 6 points to win in this squash game.

I then played the main game, dancing along with the music. I played the first world and the desert world, which both have lovely music. The dance is easier to do when the game is easier, but it gets harder in the desert level, so I mostly danced when I was dying and flying from the level.

That desert bonus level is quite tricky. I'll need practice.

I mentioned dancing. There's no dance mechanics in what I was playing, I just danced myself because there's nice music in this game.

4 jump rope challenge - living room background

Dear Readers,

Today I unlocked what looked like a living room background. There was a table and a couch of some kind. It was all kind of background blurry though so I didn't get much detail.

It was very well lit and bright as well. It looked like something out of a catalogue or magazine. I guess most living rooms would when the weather has nice sunny spells.

Today was not such a day though. It was gloomy and dark all day, but jumping 100 times helped make my day a little brighter.

3 jump rope challenge - moon background

Dear Readers,

I unlocked the moon background today after 100 skips. It's a nice image isn't it? Imagine the rabbit on the moon with a skipping rope. There's a nice view of the Earth in the background too.

I cycled through some costumes and expressions on the bunny. There's lots of Nintendo character costumes, which is nice. I stuck with the default one for now.

2 jump rope challenge - beach background

Dear Readers,

When I played this game for the first time in a long time I unlocked this beach background and felt my body getting active.

Strange thing is, this background didn't unlock until I skipped to the 100 skip goal. I was able to continue, but I didn't.

I wonder if this beach background has nice sounds for headphones. I use wired headphones though and I'm not really supposed to be physically attached to the game while I'm playing it. Might find some way to test it later.

1 jump rope challenge - cat background

Dear Readers,

Times are tough. Times were also tough when this game came out. I only played it once and found it to be a delightful little thing to help stay active. A cute little rabbit in a tracksuit using a skipping rope and you jump along with him with the Joy-Cons to play.

The one time I played it, I jumped 100 times to meet the goal for the day. This earned me a background with a cat on it, which was nice.

I haven't played it since, until now. Times are still tough and in many ways it's gotten even worse, including a recent event that I won't go into. I think it's time to play this game more. It should help me get through these times.

I'll make a few posts talking about how it's going with this game the more I play it.

116 pokémon picross - s08-06 gengar & skipping a few days

Dear Readers,

I equipped Umbreon and Spiritomb for this puzzle in order to clear the missions. I didn't notice it was a bigger than usual puzzle and I wasn't able to use Spiritomb's moves. Oops. Umbreon's move was pretty cool though, seeing all those squares reveal in a big scatter!

After doing that, I had to go through the puzzle normally. It took a chunk of time but it was fun to do the puzzle. Didn't have too tough a time but it was time consuming. By the time I had finished, I was able to get to the rare Pokémon, but I didn't have enough energy left! I'll catch up with it someday.

Here's where I'm announcing I'm skipping a few days in this blog. At the time of writing it's January 2025. I'm updating older days like this because I want to fill the days I had missed before. I'm playing some kind of weird catch-up, like I'm trying to make up for lost time and daily entries. Back then I was filling in entries from even earlier than that. However, during this time in March 2024 I was going through a tough time and I'm feeling the need to leave several days blank. I won't go into why other than saying it was tough times. I feel the need to leave a gap.

Later on in March 2024, I started playing more physically active games to help me get through tough times and I blogged about the games. These posts haven't been published yet but they will be after I post this. I played Wii Sports, the rabbit skipping rope game on Switch and the Super Monkey Ball games for Wii. There are a bunch of entries about these games in drafts, waiting to be published. When I do publish them, I'll go back to posting about Pokémon Picross and Zelda Breath of the Wild again.

Thanks for reading, and for your patience.