Tag: richie rambles

Richie Rambles: The Best Video Game You’ve Never Played

Yes, the title is presumptuous of me, but I’m 99.9% sure you haven’t played this game. Unlike my other deep-dives on video games that interest me, this will simply be a ramble about why I love this game so much. If it’s interesting to anyone, I will gladly do a deep-dive! Regardless of what you think by the end of this blog, this game is cheap on Steam and you should play it. 

The day is June 14th, 2011. I am simply a baby, I have no idea the importance of this day. For on this day the game Alice: Madness Returns is released. This game follows the main character, Alice Liddell, and her adventures through Wonderland. In this game, Alice lost her parents and sister in a house fire. This fire severely burnt Alice and, after being accused of starting the fire, Alice was forced to live in an asylum. She is watched by a doctor (who only traumatizes her more), until being transferred to a home for wayward children. She is treated horribly by the staff and other children who live there, as many believe her to be a murder (at worst) or simply a weirdo (at best). 

The artstyle of the game is my favorite part. With this grim twist on Alice in Wonderland, playing around with character designs and the settings is the most vital part- and this game does an excellent job. The dark and dingy normal world, the steampunk land where the Mad Hatter lives, the colorful and dangerous forest where you first meet the Cheshire cat- Everything is detailed perfectly. Every character is throughout in design, personality, and storyline. Despite the dark twist, the familiar characters of Alice in Wonderland still have many of their recognizable traits. The Chesire cat is playful and mysterious, the Queen of Hearts is power hungry and fueled by rage, and the Caterpillar is a wise oracle. 

My favorite part is that, to go along with these new environments, Alice gets a new outfit! It’s a minor detail, but it’s vital in keeping everything cohesive. 

While the story is very dark, and I definatly encourage people to be careful before playing (not only to watch out for gore, but also for the dark topics), I still highly encourage anyone interested to do more research and play this game! The gameplay is difficult, but fun, and the graphics are a bit outdated, but it adds to the charm. This game is one of the best examples of a story told through the video game medium (in my opinion) and more people should know about it!!

Richie Rambles: My Hero Academia

In this first installment of this new series, I (Richie) am going to be rambling about My Hero Academia. Back in 2018, when MHA first started coming out, I was introduced to the manga. I believe this was my first introduction to manga and one of my first interactions with anime as a whole. My memory of back then is very blurry, so I’m not sure how I found out about it but I’m sure it was the internet. I’ve always been a big nerd. 2018 was the same year that the new generation of Voltron was coming to an end, so my nerdy 11 year old self needed a new thing to fixate on. MHA it was! I was also learning about Homestuck around this time, but that’s a conversation for another day.

Anyways, I don’t remember much about how I originally felt about MHA. I know it was a big deal; it was something I was passionate about for years despite the fact I never actually watched the anime (I read the manga… not sure how well I kept up though). I was heavily involved in fandom spaces online. I was able to log back into my middle school Wattpad account last year and I found a bunch of MHA fanfics… Maybe I’ll revise some and publish them here in the future. MHA also got me much more involved in cosplay. Voltron was definitely my cosplay journey beginning, but I had never met another cosplayer in real life until I joined the MHA fandom. A couple of my longest friends are people I met through the MHA cosplay fandom, actually. 

Long story short, MHA was really important to me for a long while. Then, I’m not sure exactly when this happened, but I found a new interest and I went through that period where I thought that everything I enjoyed in middle school was cringe and lame and I didn’t like it anymore. After about two years of a really bad depressive episode, I realized I actually enjoyed being cringe and I wanted to re-introduce myself to all the interests I abandoned for those two years. I started with cosplay and shows like Monster High and My Little Pony. I started watching new anime and reading new manga that my friends recommended. I felt like myself for the first time in a while.

The past few months, I’ve been rediscovering my (early) middle school interests. It started with tracking down 5-6 year old musically cosplay compilations on youtube and eventually I began rewatching Voltron. Then, last month, I heard that MHA was finally coming to an end. I had seen some leaked panels from the manga circulating online and I found myself slipping back into the fandom space. I realized how much the fandom had changed over the years, and how much I had missed it. I also remember that Netflix had added the first four seasons of MHA to their streaming service. Since I had never watched the anime, I really wanted to watch it from start to finish, in preparation for the end of the series. I have a really bad attention span though, and I knew the only way to keep my focus would be if I watched it with my family. I gave a brief description to my family, and they agreed!

So far, we’ve just about finished the first two seasons. Everyone loves it so far. My dad’s favorite character is Present Mic, and he loves quoting All Might’s “I AM HERE” at any random time in the day. My mom relates to Aizawa and All Might (when he’s in his weak form). My sibling loves Tsuyu and they agreed to cosplay from MHA with me for an upcoming convention! We also have been playing the MHA card game as a family and it’s a very fun game. We’ve actually owned it for years (probably since 2018) but we’d never played it before. I highly recommend it to anyone who’s curious!

Anyways, that is all for today! Oh, for anyone curious, Kirishima is my favorite character!