John Wick of Dogs posted:

No, you're thinking of Stuart Gipp

Farg posted:

one day tim will release the star citizen of video essays. it will be 1 million hours long and he will say "buddy" with every possible intonation you could dream of

Apes-A-Poppin posted:

I froze. They might as well have been speaking Klingon.

I just rewatched the Doom one for like the fifth time last week. I’m not crazy about new videos either and a happy patron (to the aghastment of those screaming grifter).

quote:

The camera in the following full color shot of the cutscene inched up past the girl's heart clutching hand as I clutched my own heart, taken as it entirely is, Tokimeki Memorial shocks me with the depth of its narrative puzzle box. I consider myself a somewhat more self-aware-than-most-people sort of 21st century person, and this moment still shocked me. I gasped. I held the breath I obtained by way of that gasp during that gas by distinctly recalled with crystal brilliant clarity of moments from a previous life. In my eighth playthrough I pursued blue haired baseball team manager Saki Nijino who can enjoy practically any date spot. All she wants in a boyfriend is someone with persistence and perseverance. In the presence of such a man. She'll forgive many if not most faults. Saki Nijino's easygoing-ness, open-mindedness and acceptance makes Shiori Fujisaki look like a Republican, and that's saying something.

A Saki Nijino playthrough of Tokimeki Memorial is relaxing, enjoyable and relatively stress free, every bit the hazy rosy school days reliving the blotchy fuzzy PC Engine box art promised and more dating Saki Nijino, basically presents the player, Tokimeki memorial’s equivalent of an easy mode. However, in this route, like in all routes, Shiori Fujisaki still looms.

The game still begins with the protagonist internal monologuing about his lifelong crush on Shiori Fujisaki. Any way you choose to play Tokimeki Memorial you'll have to see Shiori Fujisaki. Talk to her after school sometimes and deal with whatever her hidden feelings might be. So what was that for my second through my 13th playthroughs of Tokimeki Memorial, I friend-zoned Shiori Fujisaki every which way the game let me.

In the process I learned everything about her, including things I feel, damaged to have learned. In other words, I have six times as much experience cooling Shiori Fujisaki down as I have heating her up. On my Saki route playthrough playthrough number eight, I accompanied Shiori Fujisaki on a platonic excursion to the school Arts Festival. In this playthrough I purposely hadn't joined a club yet. Not joining a club lets you use the school culture festival is a one-off sort of date mulligan. Showing up at the school festival unattached to any club results in your being able to choose a girl to shout out from the crowd.

Then, you can choose any exhibit you'd like to witness with her. As I'd already learned seven times at this point. When you do not pursue Shiori Fujisaki in Tokimeki Memorial. She haunts you hard. You still say hello to her after school once or twice a month. She still occasionally asks you out in the hall, and yet as you routinely ignore her. She responds with much more profound forlornness than any other girl in the game. Tokimeki Memorial is writers which yes included koji Castlevania Symphony of the Night Igarashi made sure that it hurts to choose lukewarm conversation options with Shiori already above all other girls.

In my seven playthroughs at that point, I'd witnessed plenty of cold Shiori moments though I was not prepared for the interaction that ensued, when I took her to the school festival in my eighth playthrough. I chose to take her to the art clubs booth where the club members were exhibiting their skills by drawing portraits of any attendees. My protagonist at my suggestion suggested that Shiori have her portrait drawn. Shiori immediately replied to that, and I quote, “I don't like having my picture drawn.”

I gasped for meta textual reasons alone, this flat declaration blew my mind. Then, the protagonist said something that made me gasp. Again. That's two gasps. We call that a double lung-full where I'm from.

The protagonist said, “Well, if you're not going to get your portrait drawn, let's just go home,” and then fade to black. The date was instantly over. In this other life after I spent a semester and changed largely neglecting her. My protagonist's childhood best friend, Shiori Fujisaki, had told me point blank that she didn't like having her picture drawn, and then my protagonist had, uncontrollably by any of my dialogue choosing, spoke to her tersely, in a manner befitting a bad husband.

The tonal whiplash of it shocked me. From that moment on, I'd never be able to get that splinter of a memory out of my brain. It shocked me both that Shiori and the protagonist could achieve such a snippy relationship, and that such a profound interaction lay hidden underneath so many layers of chance.

It took a lot of work to extract details like this from Tokimeki Memorial’s iron grasp, at 1994-CD loading speeds, players needed to devote so many toiling hours to experience even a sliver of this game’s everything that most Normie players probably took it like a personality test, followed their whims, walked out, satisfied, and then had a delightful conversation or two with real world friends who had a completely different experience.

Yet Tokimeki Memorial murder-glares at would-be completionists. We can play this game, too many alternative ways. We can concentrate on leveling up our mysterious hidden clubs stat so as to blow people's minds at the school festival. We can chase a friendship with Ray, the most popular guy at school, resulting in some bizarre narrative twists involving a high drama kidnapping plot that most players would never see. We can date quietly, or in a showboaty manner that magnetizes the Final Fantasy random battle attention of local brawling gang punks, or we can level up our appearance stat to the detriment of all else, even our health, shaving our every other virtue into a smooth nub in hopes of winning a morsel of attention from me Nakagami the biggest breasted most fan clubbed girl in all the school.

Or you can do what I did and follow your fooled heart toward what you expect is a long happy ever after with box-art-girl Shiori Fujisaki. You can accept the brand's insistence of her as your canonical girlfriend. Put yourself in her mind's shoes. Try your best to be genuine and good enough for her and then peak halfway through your second year before action-falling into eventual graduational solitude.

You can take this final loneliness as catharsis or you can adopt a serial killer's brain and min-max your way to a final revenge-happiness with Shiori. Though at what cost? What did you spend to make this perfect girl blush? What divine hat did you shrink to fit your human skull? How many tricks, how many resets? How many reloads? How many dark baskings in the sad-reality that you can't in fact track back to how it was for actual you. So virtual-Midsummer-Night's-Dreamings toward this ideal individual will have to do.

Have to do for how long? For now, for how much later? Here's Shiori-the-object, the final Demetrius, unaware of the clock workings of the machine that put her in front of you. Here we have programmed the artificial intelligence of our souls to solve a board game that, if rendered physical, would occupy twice the square footage of the Library of Congress and to the Library of Congress's parking lot.

Look at her. First to you she was an ultimate Dracula, a final boss with softer verbs. Now you've done it, and you've duped her, you've worse than duped her... you practically wrote her. You see when you make a game that feels like a person you make a player that feels bad to treat that person like an an object.

Perhaps this particular hacker's guilt is the point Tokimeki Memorial’s designers sought earnestly to impress upon us in 1994 or in 2020. Or maybe I'm giving a little too much credit to some people who just wanted to sell copious hot anime girl branded merch, on the other hand, ain't love changing yourself for someone else? Ain't love a two-way street? So what if I, tried harder here than I've ever tried for real? Even with that perfect ideal girlfriend who told me she loved me every day for six years? To whom do I owe me feeling bad? You? Or this video game? Is Tokimeki Memorial making me feel this way on purpose? I think yes. I honestly do not think I'm reading too much into this. Tokimeki Memorial is a post-cyberpunk work of pop-literature that wants you to have this exact experience. Maybe to you right now, I sound like some kind of lunatic... buddy, trust me, I went through this game, I lived this you probably didn't. The way I felt right here at the true ending of this game was wild.

CaptainViolence posted:

ziasquinn posted:

ahem.

ziasquinn posted:

good news, new video on sunday

ziasquinn posted:

good news, new video on sunday

John Wick of Dogs posted:

Did he say that in his stream today or something

ziasquinn posted:

CaptainViolence posted:

Escobarbarian posted:

This was mean lol

Chieves posted:

Tokimeki is his magnum opus, peak of season 1 by far.

John Wick of Dogs posted:

If any of you see Tim tell him I said "disfrutas el fin de semana".

He'll know what it means

Chieves posted:

Tokimeki is his magnum opus, peak of season 1 by far.

Farg posted:

one day tim will release the star citizen of video essays. it will be 1 million hours long and he will say "buddy" with every possible intonation you could dream of