We Played the Zelda 1 Prototype!

We played the Zelda 1 prototype the other day on Poemato CX! I needed to get a few screenshots for my upcoming Zelda book, so we decided to make a stream out of it… and it turned out to be pretty cool and memorable! You can check out the full stream playlist here.

(For some reason, playlists don’t embed properly on this site anymore, but I’ll embed it here too in case I fix it in the future)

You can read more about my Zelda book here and sign up for pre-order notifications here!

The Rare Japanese Zelda 1 Board Game!

Poe and I have been working hard on our first Legends of Localization book with the folks at Fangamer. (BTW, sign up for pre-order notifications here!) The book features photos of a lot of rare Zelda merchandise, so we went and procured a lot of it!

One of the big pieces we got was the rare Japanese Zelda 1 board game by Bandai. It’s different from the North American Zelda board game… and it looks super-cool! So we opened it up recently during a Zelda stream, check it out here:

We’re planning on playing it on stream someday, and the chat will even get to play as a player or two! No definite plans or dates on when yet, but stay tuned and follow us on all the things in the meantime!

Poemato History: Mato’s Very First Let’s Play Video!

Back in like 2006-2008, YouTube was just getting big, and I really enjoyed when people would upload game videos with commentary added. Even though I was SUPER shy and had no confidence in my speaking ability (especially when using a bad microphone and talking to no one in the room) I decided I’d try a video game commentary video of my own as a test.

I played a bit of a game called Time Zone, which I translated with a fellow ROM hacker (and current Poemato CX regular!) SparTonberry:

Anyway, you can feel the lack of confidence and skill from the video – that’s why I didn’t do anything beyond this initial test. I wouldn’t do any Let’s Plays or streaming again until 6 or 7 years later, when we created Poemato CX. It’s neat to look back and see your roots sometimes, though, so even though this is pretty embarrassing and cringe-worthy maybe it’ll help inspire others to get out there and NOT give up after a disappointing test or two. Don’t be like me 😛

We Streamed Work for My Upcoming Zelda Book!

My very first Legends of Localization book is well underway, and it’s even listed on Fangamer’s store now! Sign up to be notified when preorders are available!

lolsignup

Anyway, I needed to get some final screenshots from the GBA version of Zelda 1’s second quest for the book, so yesterday we streamed the whole thing! It was fun and weird and it was great to stream again after such a long sick break:

We also explained more about the upcoming book, the crazy lengths we’re going to make it awesome, and even share some pics of things we bought for the book that we might sell later! Check it out!

Poe’s Recommended Books & Movies

Just as Mato started to get over his cold/flu, I developed a sore throat & cough! Nobody wants to listen to a pair of coughing sickies play video games, so Poemato CX will be on hold for a little longer than anticipated. Since we haven’t been streaming, we’ve been watching movies on Netflix instead. I’ve also been reading lots of books. Here are some books & movies I’ve read & watched in 2015 that I’d like to recommend:

Books:

  • 2001: A Space Odyssey – I’ve read all four books in the Space Odyssey series, but the first one is my favorite. It’s slightly different from the excellent movie, but in the best ways possible.
  • Angry Housewives Eating Bon-Bons – I’m not just into sci-fi, lol. This book follows the lives of five ladies over the course of about 30 years who start a book club together. A entertaining read.
  • The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up – I’m also super into self-help books. This one teaches you a new method for clearing the clutter out of your life for good. It encourages you to keep only the things that “spark joy”.

Movies:

  • God of Cookery – A very silly kung fu movie about cooking. It’s by the same people who did Kung Fu Hustle and Shaolin Soccer.
  • The Brass Teapot – A weird and entertaining independent movie about a couple who finds a teapot that spits out money whenever they injure themselves.
  • Time Lapse – A time-travel movie about a group of twenty-somethings who find a machine that takes pictures 24 hours into the future. They exploit it for personal gain & there are consequences.

I could go on and on, but that short list should be enough to keep you guys entertained for a bit! Also, Grandma’s Boy recently became available to watch on Netflix Instant streaming. That’s Poemato’s #1 favorite movie of all time, and we both highly recommend it.

~ Poe

Poemato CX Stream Magic Anniversary!

I was looking at old stuff and realized that today marks the 1 year anniversary of the day I showed off my first “stream magic” on Poemato CX! You might recall it was for Final Fantasy VI T-Edition, which was an amazing game by itself, but the whole poemato+game+chat connection really helped us level up our stream!

Anyway, here’s the debut of the fancy programming stuff:

Things have come a long way since then, and somehow I think it’s still going to go much, much further before long!

Status Update!

Mato here! I’m still sick but getting better – I got a really bad cough too, so it might be a while until we’re good enough to stream without me blowing up people’s ears with my bellowing throat howls.

Things are also starting to get mighty busy for us. We’re finishing up getting our new house, we got a vacation in a few weeks, my work is getting busier than ever, family stuff is going on, I still need to fix a million things on this server, etc. So streams might be a little light for a while 🙁 But if you’d really like, check out our old YouTube archives, maybe there’s stuff on there you haven’t seen before!

Also, check out some fellow CXers’ streams too!

In my downtime I’ve been playing Yokai Watch to try to level us up. I even looked up lots of cool Japanese tricks on how to get high levels quickly… but they all got fixed in the latest version of the game 🙁 So right now I’m stuck grinding super-slowly in a few places. I don’t want to enter any new areas or catch any new stuff unless it’s on-stream, so that really limits my options. Does anyone have any good grinding spots or tips for Yokai Watch 1? Re-fighting the last boss is such a pain, and we haven’t entered the Infinite Hell dungeon yet…

The Best Game Music of All Time

While we played Jajamaru Ninpo Cho on stream the other day, everyone commented on the quality of the battle music. I threatened to make a long video out of it, and then I did!

Please enjoy this amazing battle music in an all new way!

Famicom Exorcism #2 w/ Guest Star: KingDarian!

A few days ago we held our second Famicom Exorcism, and since KingDarian was in town at the time, we let him pick the Famicom game this time!

He eventually chose a game called Jajamaru Ninpo Cho, which almost got released in English as Taro’s Quest. It was fun and the music was bad – it was a memorable experience!

I’ll need to improve the audio setup for future 3-person streams, oops! And I need to remember to turn the game down even more for future Famicom streams. Still, check it out! This was actually the last stream we did – shortly after this I fell sick and I’ve been sick ever since. I met 8000 people at Camp Fangamer that I guess it was bound to happen 😛

Poemato CX on Hold for Recovery Time

As many of you know, Camp Fangamer was last weekend. Mato met and shook hands with hundreds of people, and as a result he’s come down with a post-con cold! It’s a pretty bad one, so we’re gonna take some time off from Poemato CX for a few days so Mato can rest and recover. There probably won’t be an EarthBound Central Live show tomorrow.

Please tweet funny MS Paint drawings at Mato (@ClydeMandelin on Twitter) to help keep his spirits up!

~ Poe