Playing Ring Fit Adventure Without Legs and Getting Back Into the Nintendo 3DS

Today I played Ring Fit Adventure for the first time since I got it near its launch in October 2019 and had recorded a few videos of it for YouTube. I'm not able to play the game standing up yet due to the foot surgery, so I have to hold the left Joy-Con up as if it were on my leg to get the game to let me play. It turns out there are several ways you can play the game using only the Ring-Con, meaning I was able to sit down on the couch and exercise for the first time in a long time. They have a Quickplay option, which has several exercises/minigames that explicitly state Ring-Con only, which was super helpful. They have worldwide leaderboards and even show you when you are about to surpass a random player's score, which gives you enough motivation to get a few extra reps in; I found it to be very effective. Unfortunately my Apple Watch wasn't charged so I didn't time or measure myself, but I played a lot and expect to be pretty sore tomorrow. One of the workouts is meant for your pecs, and you push in and hold the Ring-Con for a moment and then release. As you progress in the stage, you have to push in the Ring-Con even further, which is more difficult. Since I can't really do leg workouts, I found that I could put the Ring-Con in between my legs and work my inner thighs that way. I would switch back and forth between my arms and legs until I just couldn't push in and hold the Ring-Con anymore. Of course, this made my score way higher than it otherwise would be, so I made sure the game didn't save the record or post it to the leaderboards. I do suspect some of the people near the top may be doing that to increase their position, though. I made sure to stretch afterward, and Heather took Day 1 progress pics of me. Ring Fit Adventure is a lot of fun, so I hope I will stick with it and see improvement in my physique over time. I hear once you actually start seeing results, you become a lot more motivated to consistently exercise. I’m going to get that Socrates philosophy body. [There is a reddit thread here discussing whether Socrates actually said that famous quote that gets thrown around.]

Getting swole #RingFitAdventure #NintendoSwitch pic.twitter.com/x2jFDGIcEd

— Charles (@CharlesARatliff) May 27, 2020

Heather and I have been watching a ton of Disney stuff lately, mainly because I haven't seen most of their classics and want to before I jump into the Kingdom Hearts franchise. I started a Letterboxd account if you want to track the fancy version of what I’ve been watching, along with my ratings. We are going to rewatch Toy Story 1-3 to prepare for Toy Story 4, which neither of us has seen yet. I originally wanted to only watch Toy Story 3, but Heather convinced me we should watch all three films due to the character growth that occurs throughout them.

I also played The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time today on my New Nintendo 3DS XL (Majora’s Mask edition!), the first time I've loaded it up for a few weeks now. Heather was reading on her Kindle next to me (the Kindle I gave her after she stepped on and broke the other one I gave her!). Instead of wasting time refreshing social media on my phone over and over, I am trying to use my 3DS more often instead. I also finally started Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies recently, which is a great quick start-and-stop game since you can save whenever you want. I love the Ace Attorney franchise and remembered I haven't played the two most recent games! The 3D effects in it and Ocarina of Time are great. I am still wowed by it and vastly prefer it to playing in 2D.

Some other stuff I feel like mentioning:

Made banana chips with old bananas
Released Part 12 of my Half-Life 2 playthrough
Played Apex Legends with Heather
Started my Udemy Photoshop course
Did all my Streaks!
Heather's garden compost bin came in. She seemed pretty excited about it, and it seems cool and sturdy!
We gave Lemons the Hamster some dried yellow squash. They seemed to really be into it. They had to climb a little to get to it and it was super cute.
I watched Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 10 Episode 9 while eating delicious Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. The key is to pour an excessive amount of salt into the water before it boils.
Worked on an Onward VR video for a little bit.

What a cutie.

I started playing ChilledCow's "lofi hip hop radio - beats to relax/study to" while writing this post and immediately had flashes of Front Mission 3 in my head, making me want to play it. I don't know why. Perhaps the music sounded like something in the game, though I played it far too long ago to remember.

Front Mission 3 Character Art by Akihiro Yamada

Japan: Electric Town (Episode 02)

Up at 4 AM and too excited to sleep, I fiddled around on my brother's laptop and began what would become my early morning ritual of watching weird Japanese television. We decided to make Akihabara the first place we visit, not only because it's the place to go if you're into video games, but also because we needed extra batteries for our video camera and a power strip to charge all of our electronics at once. (The hotel room only had a total of two outlets, one of which was in the bathroom.)

Since my brother and I got ready so early, the only place we knew of to eat at, and the least intimidating, was a Western-style breakfast cafe on the 7th floor of the Annex tower of the Shinagawa Prince. It was a nice place to eat, with large windows covering the room allowing one to look out at the surrounding city, with nearby buildings growing lush yards of green grass on their roofs. The cafe served exclusively a generic breakfast combo in which the only choice given was how you wanted your eggs cooked and whether you wanted coffee or tea. Besides that, you're given a nice variety of things to eat: two sausages, potato salad, regular salad, a fruit cup, a roll, and Texas-style toast along with some kind of soup and orange juice. The meal was pretty good, though I didn't care for the soup. It was at this cafe that I started noticing the amusing pattern of all the Japanese people speaking English to me as I spoke Japanese to them.

We left and walked the couple of minutes it takes to get to Shinagawa Station (I would recommend this hotel on its location alone) and took the Yamanote Line to Akihabara Station. As soon as you enter the district, it's immediately apparent that the moniker "Electric Town" is well deserved. Dozens of shops line the streets selling every type of electronic you could think of, with plenty of arcades and capsule machines in between. Our first task here was to buy the Canon BP-827 batteries we needed; they were nowhere to be found in Texas, and the ones we ordered online never shipped like they were supposed to. In Akihabara, we literally walked into the first shop we saw and there was a rack full of them. Shortly afterward we obtained the power strip, and in less than 10 minutes all the important shopping I was worrying about was complete.

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Some advertisements along with the power strip we bought.

Down the street was Akihabara's SEGA GiGO arcade complex. I made a separate, unedited video of our visit here. Knowing filming wasn't allowed, I held the camera at my side most of the time, resulting in a lot of shaky footage. It may be unwatchable for some, but I also wrote about our experience here.

Near the complex was a row of capsule machines, one of which featured Dragon Ball Z characters. (You can watch my brother and I fail miserably at obtaining a Vegeta Final Flash figure in the video.) We then went into a store called Asobit City which, like many others, had several floors that each had a different theme. The first floor contained video games, including a section devoted to English-release titles like Red Dead Redemption, and also had an area full of capsule dispensers. One of the dispensers had six different Famicom-themed holograms, so we went back to SEGA GiGO to use a change machine (we didn't notice the one right behind us) so I could get them all. Thankfully the holograms were given in order, so there was no worry of receiving a duplicate.

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Must... collect... them all!

The 2nd floor focused on toys and figurines and the like, ranging from Rockman to Batman, Aliens, and a wide range of anime characters I didn't recognize. There were also Persona 4 keychains and a Jack Frost plushie that stood out. The 3rd floor was devoted entirely to Gundam which, if I were a huge Gundam fan, would have been amazing - having only seen a couple of episodes, however, we didn't linger in this area for long. The 4th floor was a hobby and crafts area, featuring trains, models, and building materials. The 5th floor contained a large arsenal of airsoft guns which, in Japan, look incredibly realistic and don't have orange tips. There were Tommy guns, UZIs, M1 Garands, a Peacemaker, and various other machine guns, submachine guns, and pistols. In one of the aisles was the awesome picture you see below. As my brother was fishing for the camera in his backpack, a male employee watched us and approached when he took it out and said, "No picture." We pointed at the amusing photoshop to indicate that's all we wanted to shoot, and the employee laughed and said, "Just that." He was very nice, and we put the camera up right afterward. I'm not sure if it was this floor or one of the previous ones, but Asobit City also had a section for cosplay. The one that stood out to us was a mannequin wearing a full SS uniform with swastika and all. It reminded me of the incident with Prince Harry several years ago, though I didn't see his actual outfit until yesterday. I thought it was far more than just an armband.

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After her successful guest appearance on "30 Rock", Condoleezza Rice went on to star in the Tomb Raider reboot.

The 6th floor was the shooting range, which we didn't bother checking out. As we were leaving Asobit City, we noticed we had missed the basement level. Upon entering, we were greeted by rows and rows of porn. I didn't take specific notes on this area, but it was by far the most crowded floor of the entire complex and walking through the aisles was difficult. It was here that I showed my brother his first taste of lolicon (or so I'm assuming). While most things were censored here, there was a small poster featuring a drawn depiction of an underage girl, let's say... somewhere between seven and ten years old, completely naked, vagina fully visible and all. That's something you won't see so easily in the States! And while I felt a bit weird being here, everyone else was so casual about it. There was a male and female running the checkout counter with a long line of people waiting to purchase their pornographies. It felt so normal. I liked that, but I'm also a pervert.

Our next stop was a place called Big Apple, a massive pachinko parlor. Unlike similar machines I've seen in America that feature boring 7s and cherries, these were far more interesting, making you match up pictures of things like Neon Genesis Evangelion characters instead. The floor above had a video game theme, like a Resident Evil machine (Pachi-slot Biohazard is its official name) that, graphically, reminded me of the remake for the GameCube. This machine was a bit more interactive - as I watched a guy hit the buttons to stop the slots, he was also shooting a monster as Chris Redfield.

We headed back to Shinagawa Station, dropping by Super Market for the first time. I got some milk (there were cows on the side of the carton so I knew!), a bag of "Tortilla Chips Adelita Au Fromage" (basically Belgian Nacho Cheese Doritos), McVitie's Strawberry Cream Digestive Biscuits, and something else that I don't know the name of since I threw away the label before taking notes. I also bought a box of Pokémon Diamond and Pearl Kraft Macaroni & Cheese that I didn't get to eat until I got back to the States. We returned to the hotel to charge our electronics, and it was then that the front desk called. I picked up the phone and said, "Moshi moshi" ("Hello"), a customary greeting for when one answers the phone and something I've always wanted to do. It might have been better for me to just say hello in English, however, as the employee started speaking in Japanese. I replied, "Nihongo wa hanasemasen" ("I don't speak Japanese"), and he proceeded to ask, in English, if we wanted the room cleaned today. I said no and decided to never answer the phone in Japanese again. On a side note, these may totally be the wrong English spellings as I don't spend my language-learning time on rōmaji.

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Om nom nom nom nom nom

Though fairly exhausted, I knew I needed to eat a proper meal before retiring for the day, so, a bit later, we went to the food court on the second floor of the Annex tower for the first time, which soon became a common place for us to eat. Various restaurants are located in a sort of semicircle, with seating and a beverage counter in the middle along with an eating area outside. Instead of ordering your food at the restaurants and having the chefs handle your money, you use touchscreen kiosks located at the entrance. You put in your money, pick your selection of restaurant and food, and a ticket is printed out with your order that you hand the cooks at your restaurant. My brother went to the Soba Udon place and ordered minced tuna and rice and was handed a yellow numbered ticket after ordering. I went to Shinagawa Ramen and got the... Shinagawa Ramen. I was given an electronic device that beeps when your order is ready (like the ones you would find at a Buffalo Wild Wings or Olive Garden). We went to the beverage counter while our orders were being made to get our drinks. For dessert, we ordered from a place simply called "Crepe", whose motto is "Sweet, fruity & happy taste." My brother got the crepe wrapped around green tea ice cream, which he thought was OK but tasted weird (like, DUH). I got the super delicious banana crepe, which was warm and wrapped in a cone shape, holding cool cream and banana slices inside. Happy taste, indeed.

We decided to head back to the Super Market before returning to our hotel room. My brother's green tea dessert started to melt and, after commenting that finding a trash can in Japan is like trying to find a toilet in France (extremely difficult), abandoned me in front of Shinagawa Station for what felt like far more than the ten minutes he claimed. He apparently bumped into some sort of festival where they were serving food and was able to discard his dessert in a cardboard box they were using to collect trash. We bought more milk (a red carton instead of blue this time!), and my brother got some Asahi Tea and Asahi Beer.

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A Weekly Shōnen Jump I picked up somewhere. Also, all the receipts I have from July 17th! Woooooooo, receipts!

Back at the hotel my brother rested as I organized some stuff related to the trip. I also began research on the Takarazuka Revue, an all-female musical theater troupe. I can't remember why, but something reminded me of Phoenix Wright, which in turn reminded me of the Phoenix Wright musicals the troupe had put on a couple of years back. I got the urge to see if the same cast was performing locally and started researching things like how to get to the theater, how to obtain tickets, how one should dress, etc. I eventually discovered that the Cosmos troupe, considered the more experimental troupe of the theater and the ones that performed the Phoenix Wright musicals, were performing Trafalgar at the Tokyo Takarazuka Theater, which was only a short walk and train ride away from Shinagawa Station. After struggling to order the tickets online, I discovered a Yahoo! Group dedicated to the very subject. I posted a message there seeking assistance and went to bed.

We would be returning to Akihabara in the morning.

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SmugMug Version
Inside Akihabara's SEGA GiGO Arcade
List of Episodes
Introduction to the Series

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Igiari! - The Takarazuka Revue's Phoenix Wright Musicals

This is the Igiari! - The Takarazuka Revue's Phoenix Wright Musicals piece that I wrote for The Luchazine (Issue #5) that was never released. The header is by aurahack.

You may have heard me talk about the Takarazuka Revue and their amazing Phoenix Wright musicals on episode #3 of The Luchacast, but I wanted to delve more into on just what these magnificent shows really are. 

Founded by the president of Hankyu Railways in 1913, the Takarazuka Revue is an all-female theater troupe based out of Japan. Often performing musical adaptations of Western works, the Takarazuka Revue has performed shows based on movies like Casablanca and JFK, novels such as The Great Gatsby and Zorro, various plays by Shakespeare, manga, and even video games. 

The Cosmos troupe—the newer, more experimental of the five troupes that make up the Revue and the one that did the Phoenix Wright musicals—were performing their rendition of Trafalgar, and I was fortunate enough to attend a showing in July. Though I barely understood any of it, I was enthralled throughout the entire two-hour showing. With a live orchestra located in the lower front, revolving stages, seamless background and scene transitions, crazy lighting effects, beautiful and detailed clothing designs, along with great acting and singing performances, it was quite a show indeed. Now, apply everything I just said to the Phoenix Wright universe and you have something of ridiculously awesome proportions.

YES

The first musical, "Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Truth Resurrected", focuses on Phoenix Wright as he tries to prove the innocence of his former lover, Leona Clyde, who has been accused of murdering a senator. Of course, Miles Edgeworth is there to get in his way, and the results are awesome song and dance sequences featuring some of your favorite characters from the franchise. In fact, the big opening sequence features Phoenix Wright, Miles Edgeworth, Larry Butz, Lotta Hart, Detective Gumshoe, Maya Fey, and Ema Skye all dancing in tandem. My favorite sequence, however, would have to be the Phoenix Wright/Miles Edgeworth dance-off that seamlessly turns into them facing against each other in the court room. The combination of the music, lighting, and general mood due to their history makes it truly special.

Premiering just six months later due to the popularity of the first Phoenix Wright, Phoenix Wright 2 focuses on a young woman whose mother is a suspect in a crime she didn't commit. Well, that's all the official description will give you, anyway; the story actually goes much deeper, but I won't spoil anything for potential viewers. It does do a good job of capturing the twists and turns the games are so known for, however, and even introduces Franziska von Karma herself—carrying her signature whip, of course! The best part of the show comes at the end, when the main characters dress in extra fancy versions of their outfits and do a song/dance number that lasts for a good ten minutes.

It's really all the little touches that help make these musicals so great, though. Working alongside Capcom, the musicals feature a close attention to detail that doesn't go unnoticed and is much appreciated. Using actual songs (particularly from the court room), art assets and sound effects from the game just oozes fanservice, and it totally works. They even go so far as to mimic character mannerisms you're familiar with, such as the way Miles shakes his head and shrugs his shoulders, or the way that Franziska waves her finger back and forth at Phoenix whenever he has screwed up. They also do a great job with the character design, making changes when needed; for example, Ranju Tomu (Phoenix Wright) was originally going to have the same hairstyle as the character does in the game, but they changed it due to it actually looking pretty terrible. Some purists may complain about this, but the changes they make are for the better. It's just like when a movie changes a superhero's costume from the comics—some things just don't translate properly to real life.

I could write an entire Luchazine about these wonderful works of art, but I'll stop here. Words and screens can only express so much, so I highly recommend that you look up these musicals on your own; there are plenty of fansubs just waiting to be watched.

You messed with the wrong prosecutor.

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All images are screencaps I took from the DVDs I got at the Takarazuka Revue gift shop. (The 'u' is silent in Takarazuka, by the way.)

Here are a bunch of images that weren't included in the article!:

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Truth Resurrected

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Phoenix Wright 2

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The Luchacast Episode #3: Mario Might Be Evil

Released: August 30th, 2010

This is the third episode of The Luchazine podcast, The Luchacast. Not only was it my first Luchacast, but it was also the first podcast I've ever done. We started recording it on August 29th, 2010 at 2 PM Central Time.

The Cast:

Samuel Cooke - pepsicolaboy

Charles Alan Ratliff (That's me!) - Vito_Raliffe

Eric Shepard - aurahack

Goran "Pop" Popovic - GoranP

Official Description:

"Samuel Cooke (pepsicolaboy), Charles Alan Ratliff (Vito_Raliffe), Eric Shepard (aurahack), Pop Popovic (myself) cooled their intense hatred of technology and the internet in order to record the third episode of The Luchazine. Join us as we talk about how Mario might be evil, the chatroulette of Xbox, the future of open-world games, Quake 1 & 3, more Starcraft II, S-linking with little children in playgrounds, Scott Pilgrim. Phoenix Wright musicals, Sam's hatred of grapes, grieving other players in competitive multiplayer, Homeworld 2 and much more! We even answer some listener questions. Feel free to send  us a bazillion more questions to theluchazine[at]gmail[dot]com or simply post in this thread. You can also hit us up on our Facebook page if that's your thing."