MJA045

Current Status

Well, I'm back, but I wish my trip back hadn't been so... well, I chose "Winter Downs" for my emoticon in the status update because I couldn't find one for "sick" or "ill". I caught a cold the night before I left for the midwest, and I couldn't stop it despite my efforts. If I feel a cold coming on, I can usually take steps to prevent it. This time, however, it wasn't meant to be, and I endured dry mouth, congestion, and a headache for the 18hour trip back. Sleep did not come easily, and I was lucky to get two hours at a time. If I hadn't been carrying so much, I'd have stocked up on orange juice so I wouldn't have had to pay the ludicrous overhead the trains charge for drinks. I gave in and bought two, and those did a good job of keeping the roof of my mouth from feeling like sandpaper.
I was honestly convinced I'd perforated my eardrums at one point; I had all the signs, my left ear wouldn't pop and I constantly heard wind. There was almost a lot of pressure on that side of my head. I found out on Wikipedia while I was waiting at the connecting station:
"Flying with a severe cold can also cause perforation due to changes in air pressure and blocked eustachian tubes resulting from the cold."
which explains the pressure I was feeling. Of course, trains don't have a problem with changes in air pressure, but we were going from Albuquerque, through Colorado, and over through Kansas. In fact, they warn you about the altitude change from Albuquerque to Denver. Our steward even made a joke about issuing oxygen masks... for a fee (even giving the "although the bag is not inflated..." rundown you get on an airplane).
Fortunately, the pressure's gone and I don't hear the wind in that ear, so crisis averted. The whole time, I kept thinking, "this cannot be permanent, I went to a GWAR concert without earplugs, and my hearing turned out just fine... after a day." Sure enough, the worst thing now is that my ears pop if I so much as grit my teeth, but that's just a side effect of the cold. I've never had one affect my ears before; my colds are usually a nose-and-throat affair.

Anyway, I'm still sick and I don't feel much like drawing anything. I tried a few sketches when I was waiting in the connecting station, but I just couldn't get anything to come out right. Maybe I'll try some pixel art again; I've had some inspiration:
Like I said in my Twitter updates, in cleaning out my storage locker I found my old copies of Metal Gear Ac!d 1 & 2. I would have thought portable Metal Gear would strike gold again, like with Ghost Babel on the Gameboy Color, but Ac!d is just a horrible mess. For those of you who don't know, the Ac!d games combine turn-based strategy and card battle genres. It would have been fine if Snake could move a predetermined number of steps each time (upgradable through various item cards), and only used cards for weapons or special items. Unfortunately, cards determine everything, including the number of steps you can take on the game board. To top it off, they only give you a finite number of cards to take with you when going on a mission, and it's entirely possible (if not guaranteed) that you'll run out of cards before the mission ends, turning the whole thing into a guessing game than anything. The only highlight is that the artwork is fantastic (as though we'd expect less from Shinkawa) and I like some of the characters, but that's what desktop wallpapers and galleries are for. So, with nothing to justify holding on to, I traded them in for Half-Minute Hero, which turned out to be a fair trade. Granted, I'm stuck right now, but it was a long time coming before I got stuck, and it's only in two of the character arcs. The game is best described as "what if Nintendo hired Square to make a WarioWare game?" and uses a distinctly "retro" look to underpin the tongue-in-cheek humor. Actually, my only real criticism of the game is the retro graphics. I mean, I know it's supposed to look "8-bit" but the fact is, anyone who's ever looked at an 8-bit RPG or even action game knows that sprites did not look that bad. Even Phantasy Star II (which was 16-bit) had good sprites, albeit a tad simplistic.