I’m a huge fan of the Japanese cleaning-up legend Marie Kondo and her philosophy about “tidying up” your home and life.
In fact, seeing her made me wonder if it was possible to apply her idea about “sparking joy” into story-writing as well.
As it turns out, yes, it is not only possible, but it works great!
What if, whenever we played a video game, instead of controlling pixels on a screen, we were actually controlling that character in a faroff world?
And, what if, the controller of one of those characters was a speedrunner?
That sounds like it could make for a good story!
After the ten stream streak of the Rubbish to Published series, last stream finally marked us going back to our roots during the writing exercise section: random sentences.
Random sentences are a great way to give your creativity a workout. And thankfully we have a great source of them: the kanji poop book.
We’ve gotten some “crappy inspiration” from the poop book before, and it turned out great. This time, we opened up to a random page, getting the kanji for “tea” and three poop-themed sentences to choose from.
The chat voted on which of the three poop-sentences would start our story, and this is what we wrote: (bold sentence was our “random” sentence, “brown” is “tea-colored” in Japanese.)
My pick for the SoraNews24 article this week is the heartwarming: Easter egg tribute to late Nintendo president Satoru Iwata found in Pokémon Ultra Sun and Moon.
Like I talk about in the article, when Nintendo president Satoru Iwata passed away two years ago, for me it was like a close friend had died. The man had personally coded three of my favorite games (EarthBound, Pokémon Silver, and Super Smash Bros Melee), and without him the games would’ve never been the same, if they’d been released at all.
So seeing Iwata’s memory enshrined in the latest Pokémon game release brought a smile to my face. It’s exactly as he would’ve wanted to be remembered, not as a businessman or leader, but as a man who simply loved bringing games to life so that others could enjoy them as much as he did.
Top image: Twitter/@JoeMerrick
My pick for the SoraNews24 article this week is one of the best surprises I’ve had all year: Doki Doki Literature Club is the best horror-game-disguised-as-dating-sim that you need to play.
It takes a lot for me to play through a video game these days. When I was younger I’d play most games whenever they came out, finishing them to 100% completion no matter how bad they were.
But as I’ve gotten older I’ve unfortunately had less and less time to devote to games. If a game doesn’t grab me and hold my interest right away, then I’ll probably put it down and move on to something else after just a few minutes.
So I was shocked when this game, Doki Doki Literature Club, had me hooked from the very first screen, before the game even technically started.
Doki Doki Literature Club is both a visual novel and a dating sim, two genres which I’m not a fan of, and yet it’s become my favorite game released in 2017.
How did that happen? Read the article and then try out the game for yourself. It’s free, short, and will stay with you for a long time.
My pick for the SoraNews24 article this week is the nostalgia-inducing: Nintendo releases official, free online PDF of EarthBound player’s guide for anyone to read.
EarthBound on the Super Nintendo was not only my favorite video game as a kid, it still is my favorite game to this day. And now with the release of the SNES Classic, even more people get to relive playing it, or try it themselves for the first time.
And to make it even better, Nintendo put up PDFs of all the SNES Classic games’ instruction manuals on their website. But since EarthBound never had an instruction manual, we get the entire strategy guide — over one hundred pages of gorgeous artwork, hilarious writeups, and of course, info on the game.
This isn’t your typical strategy guide. The EarthBound strategy guide is a legitimate work of literature, which may sound weird to hear about a video game guide, but it’s true. Why? Well check out the article and find out for yourself.
Featured image: Nintendo
