2019

So, I'll make this blogpost a retrospective of my experience with music and videogames this year.

Let's start with music.

I hit 10,000 ratings on RYM this year. I made my first account in... 2007 I think. The account I'm currently using was made in 2008. I was already obsessive about this stuff when I created this account, and I know a lot of the music I had listened to back then was never actually rated, since I never relistened to it, which I guess is fair. Now it's been about 12 years, and the first and only landmark was reached.

My interest in exploring albums was resurrected this year, in fact. There were several years of near-absence of music exploring as I was interested in other things, for example, playing shmups. I've listened to the same old music I already loved instead of exploring. Part of that has been because I've been really depressed and sometimes not wanting to do anything, not even putting in the effort to find music. I think getting back to exploring has been good for me. It makes me happier... after all, there is nothing I love more than music, and finding new music is a huge addiction that hardly lets go when you have enough "bases" covered. As for me, there is just so many different kinds of music I have explored to such a degree, that I know I'll never run out even if I set outrageous limits like "no music from this century" or "only classical" or something.

In commemoration of this wonderful event, I would like to present my top 20 albums I listened to for the first time during this year. I could extend it much farther, but the order would become completely arbitrary beyond the first 20 albums. Well, the order is already pretty random after the first 6 or so albums, lol.

I'll also make a separate list of my top 10 albums of 2019 (which is less important, as I do not follow the newest music very particularly, but I have listened to at least a dozen outstanding albums).

Heck, since It's a new decade, I could even make a list of 2010-2019 best albums, but it would feel more appropriate to make it longer, and... I really don't wanna spend hours of my life on that list. So just look through my RYM ratings if you're curious. Quite a lot of my favourites are compilations and releases of old stuff, making the idea of presenting even a small list here feel kind of silly. So Let's just go with the other 2 lists for now.

Top 20 albums released in any time period that I discovered during 2019:
1. Shoji Aketagawa, Kan Mikami & Toshiaki Ishizuka - Daikanjyo
2. Birds and Buildings - Multipurpose Trap
3. M.S. Gopalakrishnan - Violin Melody
4. Poeme Electronique - The Echoes Fade
5. Frank Wright - Unity
6. The Axis of Perdition - Urfe
7. Michael Pisaro - Nature Denatured and Found Again
8. Frédéric Chopin (Martha Argerich) - 24 Préludes, Op. 28; Préludes Nr. 25, Op. 45; Nr. 26, Op. Posth.
9. Frédéric Chopin (Martha Argerich) - Klaviersonaten Nr. 2 & 3; Scherzo Nr. 3 cis-moll
10. Shamalamacord - S/T
11. I.corax - The Cadaver Pulse II: Mothelix Liquescent
12. Spiracle - Sympathetic Field
13. Jasmine Star - S/T
14. Tomeka Reid Quartet - Old New
15. Organized Resistance - Day of the Rope
16. Kafka's Ibiki - Okite
17. His Name is Alive - Early Works: 1985-1989 Stuff
18. Kwaidan - Make All the Hell of Dark Metal Bright
19. Daughters - Hell Songs
20. The Sea Nymphs - S/T

Top 10 albums released in 2019:
1. Michael Pisaro - Nature Denatured and Found Again
2. Tomeka Reid Quartet - Old New
3. Funereal Presence - Achatius
4. 3776 - Saijiki
5. King Midas Sound - Solitude
6. Magma - Zëss : Le jour du néant
7. Chevalier - Destiny Calls
8. Aoratos - Gods Without Name
9. David Torn, Tim Berne & Ches Smith - Sun of Goldfinger
10. Diagonal - Arc

I'd love to catch up on 2019 releases, but I found it more important to just listen to whatever I felt like listening to. As such, 2019 wasn't explored too deeply.

Some of my favourite discoveries of the year, such as Unity and Shamalamacord, were recommended to me by a different RYM user called Malagigii. Delightful stuff.

Now, let's get into videogames of 2019.

This year I've had periods where I played a lot of Double Spoiler, as usual. I also made a return to Shoot the Bullet for a while. Like the previous few years, I also played a lot of Eroge, and a lot of Warcraft III Melee. I also played in a MAME tournament called Yolympics, and another MAME tournament called La Calice Cup. Many of the games in those tournaments were new to me, and I got a new appreciation for a few of the games that weren't, such as Same! Same! Same!

I didn't actually play many new games released in 2019 since I'm not very interested, though.

So I'll start by making a small top 10 of my favourite games that I played for the first time during 2019:
1. Crescendo
2. Baldr Sky (Haven't finished it yet, could end up overtaking Crescendo)
3. Doom II: Hell on Earth
4. Sekai de Ichiban Dame na Koi
5. Turbo OutRun
6. Cool Riders
7. Tetris the Grand Master
8. Silent Hill 3
9. Daitoshokan
10. Oniikiss
5 out of 10 Eroge... I guess that makes it evident where my priority lies right now.

Next, Let's make a top 25 games released during the decade:
1. Double Spoiler
2. Fairy Wars
3. SeaBed
4. Freedom Planet
5. Subarashiki Hibi
6. Middens
7. Crimzon Clover: World Ignition
8. Gingiva
9. DustForce
10. ring^-27
11. Curve Fever 2
12. Aero Chimera
13. Transformice
14. BEVENTLAED
15. Rewrite
16. Etrian Odyseey III
17. The Cat Lady
18. Katawa Shoujo
19. Toilet in Wonderland
20. Mecha Ritz
21. Psi Knuckle
22. Limbo
23. Steins;Gate Linear Bounded Phenogram
24. Ib
25. Hollow Knight

It might be more concise to stop at 10, but I thought it might be more interesting to see a top 25. Though, please understand that I played many more older games than newer ones.

Next, my biggest accomplishment of the year, is of course, Double Spoiler.
Just like in the past several years, I've made lots of progress in Double Spoiler. A few of my best scores ever were set this year. If I had to make a top 10 of my best scores ever, I would put at least 2 scores I set this year on it. Those 2 best scores would be:
11-6 Aya: 1,890,973
9-7 Aya: 734,050
Other outstanding scores this year includes:
8-3 Aya: 3,152,013
11-6 Hatate: 2,089,307
7-3 Aya: 973,144
7-3 Hatate: 1,235,416
2-5 Aya: 354,952
5-3 Aya: 700,093
8-5 Aya: 2,284,161
11-8 Hatate: 2,048,452        
7-5 Hatate: 723,949
7-5 Aya: 741,938
8-3 Hatate: 4,015,190

You can see all the scores I set this year and download the replays on Royalflare, as always.
I spent around 500 hours on the game this year, setting 30 new high scores (out of a total of 208 possible).
Year after year, the average time spent per category is increasing, which is only logical.  

As for Shoot the Bullet, I made a blog post about all my improvements, including actually talking about the scores a bit here: https://chumthebullet.blogspot.com/2019/08/yolympics-for-july-finished-while-ago.html

While I could absolutely do the same for DS... well. Most of the scores were done early of the year, and I don't think my commentary would be as good as I want to be. Plus, since Double Spoiler is deeper, my commentary would be much longer, even if I try to keep it brief. So let's skip it this time, since it would take hours, and would completely dwarf the other content of this blog post...
Rest assured that there is a lot to say. I just don't think it's always necessary to say anything.

I already talked briefly about Yolympics in the blogpost linked above, but let's talk about La Calice Cup, too. I joined intending to play during the month of the competition. However, there was also a warm-up month where the games had already been decided and players were allowed to practice. My results would have been very different if I had made use of that month. Still, I'm pretty satisfied with my content. I spent around half the competition playing Same! Same! Same!, and the other half playing the other games. If I had to estimate, I probably played for around 100 hours during the month. How I would rank each game, and brief thoughts:
If I had to rank how much I like the games, it would look something like this:
1. EspGaluda - due to its scoring.
2/3. Same! Same! Same! & Dangun Feveron. Exciting games. Same is harder, which is better, but Feveron has a real scoring system, which is also better.
4. Galaga '88. Most people seemed to dislike it. I used to dislike it, but trying to learn basic gameplay made me like it a lot. I was totally wrong about this one. Great scoring system, overall design, and quite engaging. Bit of a slow start, however.
5. Mahou Daisakusen. This game is often poorly designed, but it is just such a great adventure/experience (love the art direction, the whole visual storytelling, and the soundtrack.) that I really like it anyways. Quite a dumb game, though.
6. Gundhara. I doubt I'll play it again, but it was fun. It's stylish and overall enjoyable, and the scoring system seems to be silly enough that it could be fun as well.
7. Sengoku Blade. One of my least favourite Psikyos, and the 2nd loop is one of the hardest, so I decided against learning it. Besides, I find horizontal Psikyo to be unusually hard, probably due to Keyboard being my input device (using the middle finger for both up and down makes horis harder to react in than verts).
8. Nam 1975. Like Galaga, it seems a lot people didn't like this game. I enjoyed it though and got a quick 1cc. Some of the stages are definitely a little empty, such as stage 3 which wastes a lot of time, but the 4th and 6th stages are great.
9. Star Force. I both like and dislike this game. I despise some of the enemy formations, and I think it was a fairly poor choice for the tournament due to how the game works, but I can't deny that it has excitement.
10. Super Spacefortress Macross II. We only played the Beginner course, which definitely leaves something to be desired (and the scoring system is not enjoyable to me). However. I briefly tried Expert Course which seems better. The game looks and sounds good, but scoring fell flat for me.
11. Image Fight. Like Mahou Daisakusen, there's a lot of "nothing happens" in this game. It has some brutal recoveries, as well. I'm not a big fan of the stage design ethos in this game, but I think that it is quite artistic, so it's okay. Couldn't do very well in this game (not even a 1-all).
12. Armed F. This game has bloated stages that are 2 or 3 times longer than needed. There's not enough ideas in this game. The enemies also all fire the same aimed bullet at you. Enemy variety is so fake. But, I think it is very pretty and I like the soundtrack. The last stage is an awesome rave party.
13. Sky Adventure. Perhaps it is "better" than Armed F in the sense that it has a better scoring system (which it does) but I found it kinda dull. It's an alright game, I respect the scoring system optimizations, but I'm not really interested to be honest. For some reason, a lot of people praised this game. I just got a 1cc and didn't bother after that.

I ended up clearing S! S! S! the day after the tournament. Damn! As for my results, I got top 10 in most of the games, including 2 first place spots. I pretty much spent at least 2-3 hours on every game, except EspGaluda because it felt unnecessary, and some of them I ended up playing a bit more, but S!S!S! is probably the only game I played for more than 10 hours. The other games I played a bit more than the others were, I think, Star Force, Armed F, Mahou Daisakusen, and Dangun Feveron (but I doubt any of them got up to 10 hours played... maybe Star Force).
The competition was, of course, quite high. Jaimers was dominating with getting top 3 in almost every game, which yeah, nobody is surprised, but it's still kind of mindblowing given how different all the games are. Just picking up any game and getting the hang of it quickly isn't something just anyone can do. Personally I have a bit of trouble getting the hang of some of those games in a timely manner (Image Fight was hopeless. I needed a lot more time to start doing well).

I'll probably join future tournaments, as it's refreshing to play more than 1 or 2 shmups. Game hopping is something I enjoy doing in a community setting, as long as it's just like a "once in a while" thing.

Let's see, other than that, I would like to mention that there's western Phantasmagoria of Flower View tournaments going on again. We used to have them years ago, hosted by Yorgje. However, no tournaments happened to my knowledge after that. Now there's a new hosts and tournaments happen very often. The level of play is quite high and not many lower skilled players join. I would like to see more lower skilled players join and enjoy the game, because PoFV is a game for everybody that likes STG, not just the best players. PoFV is one of my favourite games ever for a reason, so please, check it out.

As for other players I've followed during the year...
To be honest, I'm not following what others players do that much nowadays. I guess the community is just that scattered. Honestly, I think that's a good thing. Secondaries and primaries shouldn't mingle too much, for one. What sucks is that the players that I can actually get along with have pretty much all quit.. with some exceptions of course. Too bad.

A new decade is beginning and in a few months, Double Spoiler will be 10 years old.
I think I'm going to organize a little event that day. I was thinking we would come together and play 5-4. Anybody who wants to play DS that day is welcome to play 5-4 with the rest of us. Perhaps I'll come up with a better idea before the big day. I don't know if anyone will do it, even if it just ends up being me, that's fine. I'll stream the birthday, if I'm able. I really hope DS keeps up its activity beyond its 10th birthday. After all, It's mostly just me playing it. If you look at royalflare, there's not really a whole lot of other players submitting anything these days. That's really too bad... I hope the playerbase will grow a little. I'll do whatever I can to help realize this dream!

So to sum it up, 2019 has been a great year for me in terms of music listening! This is something that naturally does good things to my depression.
And, It was a good year for DS and photogames in general, even if I, like always, slacked a bit. I have periods when I play a lot, and then periods where I don't play at all.

I wish you all the best, and I hope we survive another decade...
Have a nice life.