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heavyelectricity · 5 years

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My 2018 in pictures

It’s been a year with a lot of good things and some crashing low points, but fuck the negatives - I got cool things, went to cool places and did cool stuff this year. Nobody can take that from me. Here’s the edited highlights.

January: I have a symbiotic relationship with nostalgia. I feed off the nostalgia of others, in order to indulge my own nostalgic interests, which fuel me to work. In January I picked up the complete run of Manga Vizion, full of Rumiko Takahashi one-shots and other cool stuff.

February: Every so often I get to do a cool trip for work, and in February I got to visit Rare’s studio in Twycross. Once you get through the massive security gate, you see lots of the old characters as you drive up towards the buildings - including Banjo and Kazooie, and of course this foul-mouthed little shit.

March: It snowed. When I first moved into my flat, I promised my stepmother that I’d take a picture of the snow-covered beach, not knowing that it never snows where I live. Finally, four years and four months later, we were told not to come to the office and I walked (very fucking carefully) to the beach. I spent a lot of time posting about the snow on Facebook to annoy my grandad, because he was ranting about how the snow brought the country to a standstill. This was the best photo I took.

April: My boss got me to mod his Wii. I’d never modded a Wii before, but it worked out fine - except for one thing. He wanted to run the Project Zero 4 patch via RGB SCART. I spent a load of time trying to make it work properly instead of getting this red screen, but couldn’t. Still, I spent so long on it that he paid me a little extra. XD

May: I went to MCM for the first time in a year and a half. I’d injured my leg, it was hot, and I didn’t have loads of money. But I did manage to get some cool stuff, including Root Letter for the Vita and the latest Lovebites EP. But the big thing was that my friend was exhibiting for the first time ever, and she nailed it. I bought this lovely print of Monika from DDLC - you can see her work at @paranoart.

June: I went to see Necronomidol! Supported by 2& and Kai of the Screaming 60s, they had an absolute belter of a set (it was a full band set too!) and played some of my favourite songs, including Keres Thanatoio (not a regular). I never posted this picture at the time because I don’t like the way I look in it - this was more or less my peak weight, as I started trying to lose weight a couple of weeks later. But fuck it! I had a good time and I loved meeting them all - especially since I won’t get to see Hina and Sari as part of the group again.

July: I was playing a lot of arcade racing games because I was writing a Daytona USA feature for the magazine. As well as Daytona, I busted out the Saturn 3D controller and played Sega Rally (better on digital), Manx TT (better on analogue) and Sega Touring Car Championship (better left on the shelf). Then I went to the arcade, played the new Daytona and transferred my mad skillz. Also, I got to interview Takenobu Mitsuyoshi, though only by email.

August: I went to Arcade Club in Bury, Greater Manchester. There are hundreds of arcade cabinets there, from great retro games to imported music games. It is the best arcade I have ever been to and I wish it wasn’t so many miles away. I only got a couple of hours in there because it was a work trip, and I want to spend a full day there. Sorry, did I say day? I meant week.

September: We won the company’s Magazine Of The Year award. Though it’s only an internal award, there was a lot of competition - at the time, we published over 50 magazine titles (we’ve since closed a bunch). I didn’t think we were going to win. I was sitting at the back of the room charging my phone via power bank, and when it became clear they were talking about us I turned to Para and just said “oh shit!” To be honest, the company conference was miserable, with lots of talk about how badly print is doing and how digital is the future. Before the awards I was trying to drink alone, quietly, when my team showed up and I had to pretend to be alright. This was a nice bit of recognition, but one that was hard to process.

October: I’ve become full-on Love Live! trash over the last few months. When I went to MCM (much easier without the leg injury and everything), I picked up some blind box Aqours figures and got best girl Yoshiko. She lives on my desk now, in my pen mug just by the controller adapters. I also picked up the Trigun collection on DVD and Cowboy Bebop on Blu-Ray, plus some CDs.

November: I went to Sony to see the PlayStation Classic - meaning that I’ve been to offices run by the three major console manufacturers (Nintendo Europe in Germany and Rare being the other two). By now, you know that the system isn’t what it could have been, and I was disappointed by what I saw that day. As soon as I played Tekken 3, I knew something wasn’t right, and sure enough found that it was the PAL version. But Sony didn’t help itself here, as it showed off the system on TVs set up for video, giving some truly horrible “enhancement” artifacts and lots of input lag. When the PR person asked what we thought of it, thankfully the Official PlayStation Magazine editor spoke long enough that I didn’t have to awkwardly say it wasn’t great - instead, I saved that for print.

December: During the second half of this year, I have been trying to lose weight - and succeeding. I started from a very high weight of 28 stone (392lbs) and a couple of weeks ago, I took this photo half a pound from the 60lbs weight loss mark. I crossed it but didn’t quite hit the 23 stone 7 lbs mark I wanted before Christmas, and now we’re having the Socially Acceptable Annual Binge™ so I’m going to have to work hard again in the new year. But this has been a huge deal for me - I’m moving better, my clothes are starting to look kinda baggy in a way they didn’t six months ago, and I’m healthier.

#my 2018 #long post

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