24 Hours of Euro Truck Simulator: The Truckening

OH BOY! Remember that laugh a minute 24 hour marathon of Euro Truck Simulator I did?!  You don't?!  Not surprising since it's the only marathon I've done where I've not lasted the full 24 hours.  Unfortunately I got drunk and ended up rage quitting when I managed to barrel roll my truck off a hill 19 hours into the marathon.  Of course, I paid a penalty to the charity but the fact I never completed that marathon has always bugged me.

Then a friend of mine came along and donated £50 to the charity as a way of forcing me into doing it again, so here's the post announcing when that shit is going to go down!  My schedule is actually pretty busy so unfortunately it will be next month and as of right now the date will be July 23rd.

As before, there will be incentives for me to drink heavily (starting a bit later this time) and prizes to be won so watch this space and get ready to go truckin'

New Prize System

So my old system for prizes was shit and confusing, so I changed it.  Also my prizes were shit, so I removed em and added a new one!

So, instead of a complicated system of drawing raffle tickets or whatever, you just donate a minimum value and wait for the draw date to happen.  Then I contact you so we can set up how you receive the prize and then you get it.  Easy, huh?

Also my prizes were a bunch of crap so I removed them all and made the PC Steam version of Final Fantasy 7 available in conjunction with the FF7 marathon happening on August 8th.  You can start donating for the prize RIGHT NOW and the winner will be drawn on the 10th.  There is no minimum value so you could donate £1 and you'd be eligible to win, just write "Prize 1" or "FF7 on Steam Prize" in your donation comment so I know that's what your donating for.

More prizes and giveaways will be done in the future so watch this page

http://www.identitygaming.blogspot.jp/p/prize-raffles.html

Big Collections Can Be A Problem

I love going video game shopping, it's great.  Doesn't matter if it's for the latest titles or retro stuff, I could spend hours perusing games, admiring their box/cartridge art and discovering new things. 

So not only do I love playing video games but I also love collecting them and because I've been gaming since the age of 4, my collection has grown to a pretty sizable number.  This is great because I now have so much to choose from.  When I want to play a game I have a great deal of genres and games from across the ages to pick from.  However, a big collection does come with a few problems.

The first is having TOO much choice.  If I'm not feeling anything specific, let's say I just want to play AN RPG, then it sometimes becomes stupidly hard to pick.  I can spend hours looking through all my games or scrolling up and down my steam list and have a really hard time just finding one to settle on.  I've had quite a fair few lazy weekends or days off work consumed by just scanning my collection looking for that one thing to play.  Then eventually when I do find the game I want to play, I've spent so much time deciding that I don't have all that much time left in my day to actually play it.  It's a terrible feeling and I've had to make a habit out of planning what to play next in advance.

The second problem is repeat buying.  I've had a few times where I've come back from the game shop with a "new" game only to find that I already owned it.  I did this about 3 or 4 times in the UK with Diablo and I nearly did it the other day with Arc the Lad on PS1.  I buy things, shelf them and then forget that I own them.

The final problem is the never ending backlog but I've touched on this a few times already so I don't think I need to say much more about that one.

The good news is that my stupid purchasing habits means I'm about to update the prize page! Hooray!

Identity Gaming Content Update

Well recently blog content has been a little bit thin on the ground.  I'm not including the large amounts of speed running I've been doing on stream when I say that because that's not something that you could ever come back to (unless I PB and upload it). 

So today, instead of raging about the industry or talking about a specific game, I'd just take a little bit of time to tell you what's going on with the blog and what might be coming up soon.

Donation Incentives

Let's start with this one since this is the stuff that people have paid for and therefore it's the most important.

You may have noticed that a couple of the incentives have been met for a while but I've not done them.  Well I just want to put your minds at rest and let you know that I've not forgotten.

For 1000 Words, I was initially waiting to get to FFX-2 and sing it live on stream, but because I took up speed running as a hobby and that takes a great deal of time, it's taking me a while to get through those Final Fantasy games.  So, hopefully some time soon I'll be heading to a Karaoke booth and performing it there instead and it'll go on YouTube shortly after.  The only problem there is that my wife and I are quite busy even at weekends so we haven't had much time to hit a karaoke booth in a good while.  Next time I go, it'll be the first song I do!

Also the Japan Poop Story and the Habanero Pepper on stream need to be done.  It's basically impossible to find peppers in this damn country, so I'm going to use the hottest death sauce I can get my hands on.  Also I'm going to kill two birds with one stone and do those goals together but a few of the donators want to see it live and it's proving rather difficulty to sync schedules but as soon as we do that'll get done.

I'm also planning to add a bunch of new incentives next month, so keep an eye out for that and keep the donations coming!

Current Content

Outlast

I'm hoping to get this game done before the 16th of this month.  I was hoping to have it done sooner but then I got wrapped up in speed running Megaman X and THEN I got a cold, so my recording schedule got messed up.  Sorry for the delay and I'm not trying to make excuses but the game is kind of shitty too....which doesn't help matters.

Gone Home

A while ago a reader donated £25 for a Gone Home playthrough and even donated the game itself, so big shoutouts to you.  This is the next game to be played after Outlast and I'll be sure to try and get through this steaming pile as fast as I can.

The Japan Gamer

I have penned a bunch of episodes for the Japan Gamer, but putting them together is taking longer than I imagined since it's not a one man job, but you can expect quite a few individual game showcases coming pretty soon (I hope)

10 Minutes of Yaroze

I started this series while I was still in Sweden and once I moved to Japan it kind of fell to the wayside.  Well I want to rectify that and get some new episodes up, so expect some real strange PS1 indie nuggets soon.

New Content and Prize Givaways

The UFO Catchers

The UFO Catchers is a series I've been planning for a while now.  Basically me and a few buddies are going to hit a game centre at least once a month and try to win shit from the UFO catcher machines.  Anything we win will be put up for grabs via a charity raffle!  So if you're into anime or video game stuff, then you might want to get that donation money ready.  More details to follow.

Future Marathons 

Due to jobs and stuff, I've had trouble finding time for marathons.  That and my webcam is busted so I can't do any facecam stuff for the stream, which kind of sucks.  But SOON, I'm getting a new computer so the monthly marathons will come back real soon.  Also I'll make a prize available every marathon for donators, so get your wallets ready.

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Well that's it then folks, that's all the updates for now.  On a side note I'm planning to rework the site a little bit to make the content easier to navigate, but I have no clue how to go about doing that so that might take a while until I can find some time to chat with people in the know.

Thanks for your understanding and support!  Keep the donations coming and I'll keep producing content for you to enjoy!

Crane Games Probably Aren't Bullshit

I've spent a lot of time on this blog talking about game centres here in Japan, but I've yet to mention these things.  UFO Catchers as they are known over here are games where you have to position a claw above a prize and try to grab it.

The prizes they put in these things can be literally anything.  I've seen collectible stuff, game systems, games, food, ice cream, all sorts of stuff is up for grabs, but when I play them I never manage to bloody win anything.  I used to think that they were rigged like slot machines are, that the claw would make one good grab after so much yen has been shovelled in, but after asking around about these things I think my idea was a little off.

There seems to be some kind of technique for these things, something I don't understand and it'll be a long time before I ever get round to mastering such a technique if it does exist.  I heard from one friend of mine that there are "professional" crane game players, who win stuff and then sell it on for a profit, it sounded nuts.  At first I was a little sceptical about the idea of these things paying out consistently to skilled players, but I do in fact know a guy who doesn't play often, but wins pretty much 100% of the time when he does have a go.

So, if you don't get enough out of regular games and you feel you need to be rewarded a bit more, get practising on these bad boys, you'll be rolling in plushies before you know it!