something about my birthday today [24]
April 26, 2026
whopee
I don't have much to write here right now [gotta head out in a couple hours], but hey, wanted to leave something here on the site considering its the place I wanted to make my hut for whatever I wanted to note down.
A time before and after Ring Racers v2.4 [also sidequests]
Yeah yeah starting with Ring Racers might be a bit cliche for me, but thing is that the first things I uploaded after my last birthday [and first Ring Racers anniversary] were a Studiopolis custom track time attack run...and a haha Grandmaster montage.
Both of these things are kind of indicative of where I was heading to with Ring Racers by that point: Poking at some custom track cups or time attack runs...and then doing two montages compiling clips from the nightmare rotation that was S-Ranking all cups in Grandmaster v2.3 [Gear 4 + All Rivals]. And that was even when I had buffer to continue as long as I played well enough for the S-Rank.
There's a lot more things that I played, completed and even mastered [in RetroAchievements] after that whole ordeal, some of which is basically documented as videos on my Youtube channel [some of it in the main one, but a lot of the raw runs were relegated to the Replay Channel with how they didn't budge much on the main one], but those being uhhh...
- Mastering Mario Kart 64, Wave Race 64, 1080 Snowboarding and Wave Race Blue Storm
- Beating F-Zero X's EK DD cups in Master and Pokemon Puzzle Challenge in Intense difficulty
- Getting no retry Platinums in Mickey Speedway USA
- Getting 1CC runs in Virtual-On [both PS2 and Saturn], VO Oratorio Tangram [DC and 360] and even MARZ's challenge mode
- Now THESE are fairly documented both on the channel and on the Virtual-On pages at Game Zones. They basically kickstarted my push to overhaul this site again lmao
- Beating Sonic 1 AND Sonic 2 [solo Sonic] with all emeralds on the Genesis versions.
And a lot more other games that are probably stashed with mentions on the replay channel or in my Backloggd account. But that's a brief mini summary of a whole year, so of course it isn't everything.
Although before the Virtual-On and Sonic runs, something funny happened.
See, for a while I was kind of...done with Ring Racers? I had done two GM montages but never felt enough energy to do a third to cap things off, and wasn't feeling doing much more with the game by that point. And then suddenly...Release Candidates for Ring Racers v2.4 dropped.
That was basically what got me hooked again to RR, at least for most of the cycles [by the sixth I started to take a back seat to wait until the final release, although I still checked every new build] until the full thing dropped in November. The release candidates also gave me enough clips to make a new RR montage [RINGS OF RAGE EX], although I considered it a bit of a side thing due to how some things changed a bit between builds. I don't feel I made it with the same burning passion as when I made the original Rings of Rage, but it was still a good effort made.
Oh, and also made up for my last year "blunder" of not having prepared anything for SRB2Kart's 6th anniversary, now putting together someting for the 7th Anniversary thanks to players who sent in clips to make something.
...And yeah, that previous experience also gave me the idea to make a more bombastic video for Ring Racers's second anniversary, as for the first one I had made a neat wallpaper with RR sprites and Robotnik Coaster [which I semi-reused for the thumbnail of this video lol] and a Ring Racers but PWNED 2 video, but felt like I could do way more if I started my plans properly much earlier than last time. So...I did start the process approximately five days before the date, and that was sure a process to go through [had a writeup about all that on the drafts, maybe later will get finished], but I'm very happy that the players helped me with this many clips and that I could put together something that met the high expectations of the idea.
The funny thing is how close that date happens to be to my birthday too - so getting to succesfully pull off that video is kind of a gift to myself as well: With how I remember the original Ring Racers release that I awaited for so long being THAT close to my birthday was such a surreal experience, although many months of up and downs with it [inside or outside the game] was certainly...something to go through.
But I'm glad I could do this much recently after "sobering up" from past thoughts I was stuck with - now in peace knowing that Sweguin's video helped the game's rep outside of the community, but also no longer being addicted to RR like I was in the first year and thus not being as chained to perception or performance [as in, performing S-Ranks in Master mode lol - they are much tougher so I now undertake them every once in a while instead of trying to take them all down ASAP like in v2.3].
Oh...yeah. I also did get to try The Karters 2 a couple of days back when I was in open beta, and to my surprise against my expectations, I could actually try Mario Kart World last december too.
I feel like there's more stuff I should be able to say in retrospective of the year and also in general, but I feel like I've already ran off writing more than I expected when I gotta go in like...roughly an hour after writing this. So that might be a story for another day.
Some last few words
I know that I haven't used this site as much as I've thought I would when I started overhauling it yet again just to note down my Virtual-On stuff, but hey, things gotta start somewhere if you're starting over. It's already something I could write up a custom track devlog immediately over here so that I didn't forget the little ups and downs of that recent story.
For sure I want to see if I can make more out of this website for my projects, whether ramblings or showcasing new stuff I've managed. But there's also some things that I have yet to return [not just stuff stuck in older versions of this site, but also things like toying with OpenMPT or drawing on the sketchbook I haven't picked up in a while]. But oh well. I guess more things to learn with another year of being alive...that's nice.
I guess this will be all I can add for now today. But if you're reading this, I appreaciate that you took your time for that. Have some music from back when I had a DSi many moons ago...it still makes me tear up with nostalgia near the end.
