A post unrelated to my trip today, but one ten years in the making. Today marked my 3650th day of cumulative logins to Puzzle & Dragons!
Ten years ago today, during a trip to Japan, I installed the game. And I’ve played every single day since then. Since I play for an hour at least every day, this means I’ve been playing Puzzle & Dragons for about 150 days!
I’ve got 2835 cards now, including every single top-tier leader and multiple copies of most everything else. I have so resources used to power up cards I will never use them all, and I’ve beaten every single dungeon in the game, including the very difficult super-endgame stuff.
The game has become extremely complex over the years. The above shows all the possible ‘awakenings’ a card can have, and making teams to beat the tough dungeons require a complete understanding of all of them.
The above is the most recent rare card added to the game (only a few days ago). I managed to get him, but haven’t yet built a team for him. In time I will. In a few months he will no doubt be superseded by a new more powerful leader, but one of the strengths of the game is that few cards ever truly become obsolete.
The game has had a massive amount of ‘collaborations’ over the years. Naturally my favourite was Ultraman and I was able to get every character. Above you may see a few cards from various other collaborations you might recognize.
I still play the game daily, still enjoy it, and still look forward to new content. I do however feel that while the game has done an extraordinary job of updating often enough to keep popular for a decade, that it has started to decline. I don’t know how much longer it will last, but I don’t doubt I’ll be playing until the day they close the servers 🙂
30 years ago today, I came to America. It was probably the best but hardest decision I ever made, and the anniversary – which I usually ignore – is bittersweet. Kristin suggested I do something ‘American’ to celebrate… so I walked to McDonalds for lunch 🙂
Including tax a hamburger happy meal now costs $6.47, which seems a lot for what you get. Service was very fast though, and the food was piping hot and looked good once I unpacked it:
I ate the burger first. As a little boy the junior burger (as it was called in Oz back in those days) was my favorite, but I grew into Big Macs for a few decades before somewhat recently returning to happy meals. It’s just enough food for me now, and I’ve grown to enjoy the simple taste of the plain hamburger.
This one didn’t disappoint, and as I inhaled it I increasingly noticed the rest of the patrons in the dining area were geriatrics or lunatics and I was simultaneously the youngest and sanest in the room. Thankfully the burger was meaty and delicious, and I almost could ignore the madwoman across the restaurant screaming about toilet paper.
Are Macca’s fried the best fast food fry? I can’t answer that now (but I will in time; stay tuned) but I will say that first impressions of this portion were high: they were crispy and hot with a nice potato taste. Unfortunately there must have been a mistake in the kitchen since they were insanely oversalted, and even the half-flat and watery Diet Coke barely cut the bitterness.
I ate them regardless, priding myself on my ability to ignore the ancient nutter gibbering about his hip flask. One of his companions seemed to gutterally grunt at him in response, and I wondered if perhaps they weren’t even human? With my food gone, it was time to inspect the toy.
Macca’s continues to cut costs and the plastic in this Cosmo (a good dog) from Guardians 3 would have probably been better used for anything else. What child wants this? I considered saving it for a future birthday gift for Bernard, but came to my senses (unlike the wizened loon mumbling to himself in the corner) and hurled it into the nearest trash bin.
My anniversary meal completed, I fled the asylum restaurant and walked home. It took a while and was hot, and my extreme salt-induced hydration made it feel hotter, but at least I hadn’t let the day pass without doing something special. Happy 30 years to me 🙂
I’ve been listening to a lot of Nick Cave recently, and also reading about his life and work. It’s interesting how different people like his catalogue in different ways, but this isn’t surprising since he’s been going for 40+ years now. Coming up with a list of my favourite songs was a herculean task, but I’ve done it. Putting them in order would be impossible, so here I’ll present them chronologically:
The Mercy Seat (1988)
I hear stories from the chamber how Christ was born into a manger
And like some ragged stranger died upon the cross
This is one of his signatures now isn’t it? I was a big fan before this one was released, but when I first purchased and played the (vinyl!) single I had a feeling Nick Cave wasn’t going to remain ‘my’ guy any more. Previously I had tried to turn my friends on to him with no success; after this one it was easy. And rightly so; it’s a fantastic song and a deserved classic.
The Ship Song (1990)
We talk about it all night long, we define our moral ground
But when I crawl into your arms everything, it comes tumbling down
Nick Cave had emerged from the wasteland with his Tender Prey album (in 1988) and now he was on TV and magazine covers and (at least in Australia) most people no longer said ‘Nick who?’ And then this song – the first single from The Good Son album – came out, and the whole world started paying attention. It’s not that he hadn’t written love songs before, but I think this was the first time his signature mix of melancholy and beauty reached a sublime level. I’ve heard this countless times over the years, and it can still bring a tear to my eye. This one will be played at my funeral. (Also this unique cover version is extraordinary.)
Loom Of The Land (1992)
I told her that the moon was a magical thing
It shone gold in winter, and silver in spring
The 7th album Henry’s Dream was a tour-de-force, and while Cave himself apparently was not a fan of the production, it was around this time that I felt the band transitioned from making great albums with a few fantastic songs into fantastic albums with nearly perfect songs. For me this one is the standout of the album, and one of my all-time favourites of his. Here he tells a seemingly simple story of a boy and a girl using poetic lyrics laced with menace and despair. The melody and instrumentation are beautiful, and his vocal is virtuoso. This is a masterpiece and – for me – quintessential Nick Cave.
Do You Love Me (1994)
The moon in the sky is battered and mangled
And the bells in the chapel went jingle-jangle
Another raw ‘love song’ that suggests violence, madness and death. This was the first single from the Let LoveIn album and it’s yet another step in the path that led to MurderBallads. This is a melodic and very singable song that celebrates the darker sides of life and I have loved it since the first moment I heard it.
Do You Love Me? (Pt 2) (1994)
Dreams that roam between truth and untruth
Memories that become monstrous lies
I hesitated to include both Do You Love Me‘s, because I didn’t want to eclipse this one. It’s the last song on the album, and wasn’t released as a single, but for me it’s without question the best song on that album and a fitting mirror of it’s namesake. In lesser hands this would be a dirge, but Cave transforms it into a beautiful and moving chronicle of (his?) lost youth and innocence. Do we love him? Of course we do!
Sail Away (1994)
She came beside me amongst my coat
Her breath was warm against my throat
We clung to each other so very close
For the worst had come true
This was the b-side to the Do You Love Me single, and I’ll never understand why because it is – and probably always will be – my favourite Nick Cave song. There’s so much great about this – the music, the performance, the delivery – but chief amongst them is the wonderful lyric, which contrasts innocence and fragility with literally ‘the worst’ coming true. Like all Cave songs it doesn’t matter to me what it is about, since the emotion it evokes is more important, and here those feelings are painful and so close.
That’s the thing with Nick Cave: his lyrics are so often dark and tortured and describe horrors that most people would run from (he wrote an entire album about murder) but they are also transcendent, and strangely reassuring. The best Nick Cave songs make you happy-sad in the best way: they remind you of life, and how special that is. For me, Sail Away is one of the best examples of this.
Black Hair (1997)
Today she took a train to the west…
For me, The Boatman’s Call is the best Nick Cave album; so good that it was a true struggle not putting half or more of the album on this list. The album – which Cave has since described as a “heroic melodrama born from rejection” – was spun from a turbulent love affair with singer PJ Harvey, and the songs and performances are intentionally slower and simpler than anything he had done before. It’s a poignant and sincere album filled with exquisite examples of his craft, and perhaps more than anything he had previously done it makes the listener feel they are right there with him as he sings. This particular song is a musical mantra, repeating over and over again his wish that Polly (and her Black Hair) perhaps didn’t choose to take that train and leave him. A moving song about failed love.
Where Do We Go Now But Nowhere (1997)
If I could relive one day of my life
If I could relive just a single one
You on the balcony my future wife
Oh who could have known, but no one
This is one the saddest songs he has ever written: the lyrics speak of love and loss and addiction and death and there’s no sunny sky on the horizon in the singer’s world. Put this one on when your overwhelmed or need to be sad, or when you just want to spend a few minutes ‘nowhere’.
Oh My Lord (2001)
They claimed that I had lost the plot
Kept saying that I was not the man I used to be
By now the young anti-establishment punk from Melbourne had become an acclaimed songwriter and performer that was being called the next Leonard Cohen. He was a ‘superstar’; famous worldwide. Of course the more famous one is, the less private one’s life becomes, and if this song is sincere it speaks volumes of the difficulty he had with the intrusions from the media into his private world. A dark topic for him perhaps (at the time), but once again he managed to spin the negative feelings into a marvelous and powerful song.
Nature Boy (2004)
She moves among the shadows
She floats upon the breeze
She moves among the candles
And we moved through the days and through the years
There’s always been that thought in me that Cave writes (and delivers) his lyrics with just a little twinkle in his eye. Could it be that his talent is even greater than we know: that the pain and darkness he puts onto his songs is an act delivered by an entertainer of superhuman ability? If true, then surely he would drop that disguise every now and then and show us the ‘real’ Nick Cave? And if he did, then surely it would be this lovely and wonderfully happy song about love.
(For the record I don’t believe the above. I think the truth is he is an astonishingly talented writer and performer that has always struggled with addiction and loss and even guilt and – to our benefit – has successfully channeled his struggles into verse and song. I don’t think there’s any doubt he’s one of the most talented songwriters of all time, and quite possible the best alive today.)
As I said this was an impossible list to compile, and even writing this I removed and added songs several times. I also omitted cover versions, despite some of them (Long Time Man, Running Scared) being amongst my favourites. You’ll also note the latest song is almost 20 years old now, since Cave’s last few albums haven’t spoken to me like his earlier work (especially the mid 90s stuff) does, despite them being amongst his most acclaimed.
I know a few of you are big fans of his work as well. Which songs did I leave off that should have been on this list?
Let’s return to Charlestown Square, circa 198x. They hadn’t even started absorbing ‘Hilltop Plaza’ yet, and the ‘northeast exit’ (which no longer even exists in it’s then form) near Best & Less led out onto a sun-bleached concrete walkway around a Newsagent. That’s where I bought so many copies of Zzap64 and Commodure User and Smash Hits and even an issue or two of Warlock and Proteus. I can even remember where the magazines were in the store, and the exact path (clockwise) I’d walk around the enormous displays to choose what I wanted. This was before Lotto, and the place was dedicated to print media, was absolutely wallpapered with racks of magazines from all over the world, and had that exquisite ‘Australia newsagent smell’ that would take me right back were I to smell it now. It’s long, long gone now, living only in my memory. Has the age of the newsagent itself also passed?
These days, when I ‘go shopping’ (which is rarer than ever), I tend to visit a very specific set of shops: game shops, hobby shops, bookstores etc. There was once a time where newsagents was always included in this list. I remember as a youth, during the strolls down hunter street or the occasional day trips to Sydney, I would never walk past a newsagent without going in and (usually) buying something. As far back as I can recall there were magazines I would always buy, and even if the latest issue wasn’t available the newsagent was always a reliable place to grab a cheap drink, chocolate bar or bag of lollies.
When I came to America there was a lot of culture shock (“Why does bread taste so weird?”, “Why is everything so sweet?” are two I remember) and I can still recall being surprised by the lack of traditional newsagents. Magazines were of course sold, but the biggest racks were in grocery stores and paled in size to the average Australia newsagent. We occasionally visited a dedicated magazine shop in Rochester that had a massive selection, but it seemed wrong that the magazines I knew were still in print (mostly UK magazines) were mostly unavailable in my local shops.
Then the internet came along and changed the magazine industry forever. People stopped reading printed magazines, the number of available titles contracted, and as a result the magazine-sellers closed. Magazine racks in shops here in the USA diminished or disappeared entirely – my local grocery store for instance no longer sells any except for a small selection of gossip rags at the register. I used to still buy mags I was interested in at the bookstore Borders, but eventually it closed as well, and for a time things looked grim.
Thankfully Barnes & Noble stepped up, and (about a decade ago) our local one added an enormous magazine section that has served me well ever since. There’s endless talk of them closing and/or getting out of the magazine business (since almost all the mags they sell are imported from the UK) but so far, so good. It’s not the same as a newsagent though, and I sorely miss the type of shop I remember from my youth. Which is why I loved visiting Australia every year and going into the newsagents for a bit of nostalgia.
For about the last decade business was getting difficult for the Australian newsagent. Readership of magazines had declined, and it was becoming cost-prohibitive to import magazines from the UK and USA. Many newsagents were turning into gift shops or simply lottery vendors, and the magazine racks seemed smaller every time I visited the country. Then along came covid and it hit the humble local Australian newsagent like a juggernaut. When I was there last year I walked to three trusty newsagents only to find all of them were gone, and the few that remained barely sold any magazines. In the year since I have read about many closures, including a 100+ year old newsagent in South Australia (believed to have been the countries oldest) and a 60+ year old one in Newcastle. Apparently closures were accelerated in the last year by several Australian newspapers canceling their print versions, but the end result is that entire communities now have nowhere to buy magazines.
When newsagents are gone magazines will follow, which to this avid reader is a sad thing. But much like the vinyl renaissance I’ve read of upturns in the sale of books and even ‘dumb’ phones, and suggestions of the younger generations wishing to spend less time online. I hope that one day this leads to a magazine renaissance. Until then I suppose I’ll be content with memories of the newsagents of my youth, and my monthly B&N ‘magazine run’.
We all occasionally wonder about what we’d do if we could travel back in time, and I have said many times if I could step into 198x the first shop I’d go into would very likely be a newsagent. I’ll take this one step further and say it would be that exact newsagent I described in the opening of this entry. I wonder if they’ll have the latest issue of C+VG…?
As a followup to the SNES, Nintendo released the Nintendo 64 (N64) in Japan in mid 1996, and in the rest of the world in 1997. Even at the time it was an unusual choice for the system to use cartridges for games (when the industry was moving to discs), and this ultimately doomed the console to lose in the market against the PlayStation.
I got my N64 early, since I had befriended the guy who ran the game company I would in time write reviews for, and he brought me back one from Japan in 1996. I had exactly one game for it, Super Mario 64, but this was such a groundbreaking and important game that it hardly mattered. I played it nonstop.
When the US version was released nine months later, I had to modify mine to play American games. Luckily this was a trivial process (I had to open the system and remove a piece of plastic) and I then had an N64 that could play games from anywhere in the world. Despite this I only ever bought one other Japanese game – Sin and Punishment – which was also fittingly the last N64 game I ever bought (in 2002).
As I mentioned this was a system hamstrung by the choice of cartridges. It was technically competent and had a great controller – the first true analogue controller for a home console in fact – but gaming was maturing from simple 2D graphics and games needed far more data storage. Publishers faced the choice of inexpensive CDs for PlayStation versus expensive cartridges for N64 and it’s unsurprising the discs won. As a result the N64 was the last non-handheld console to use cartridges until they returned for the Switch over 20 years later.
I only ever bought about 25 N64 games, and traded many of them in in the early 00’s when EB Games offered too-good-to-refuse prices. My remaining collection is above. Despite the small number of games there were some true classics on the system, including Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time, which is a wonderful Zelda game that pioneered many advancements that countless games utilize today such as lock-on targeting and a user-controlled camera.
Ultimately though this system must be remembered as a failure which lost Nintendo control of the industry. It’s followup – the GameCube – didn’t do well either, and it wasn’t until the phenomenal success of the Wii that they would return to the top of the market. I loved the N64 when it was the current system (I always preferred it to the PlayStation), but in retrospect it’s unquestionably my least nostalgic Nintendo console.
Which is one reason why I’m now saying goodbye to mine. I’m about to sell another large chunk of my collection, and will this time say goodbye to my NES, SNES, N64 and GameCube games (and hardware). Lots of memories will go with it all, but the time (and price) is right and I feel comfortable parting with it. I hope the next owners get as much joy from the games as I have over the years 🙂
