Tag: gaming

Retro gaming

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"Pinball Wizard" Austin, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/8, 1/50 sec, ISO6400
 “Pinball Wizard” Austin, 2016

こんばんは！How’s it going? Happy we made it to Friday?

This evening after dinner, we went to an arcade called Pinballz to play some games. This arcade is really cool because they have dozens of pinball machines, from very old classics to some relatively new ones. It was so nostalgic to see all these machines from my childhood memories! Isn’t it cool when you can awaken those memories that haven’t seen the light of day for many years? The human brain is amazing… memories that have been buried for so long can somehow reappear!

Pinballz also has old video games as well, many of them I haven’t played for 30 years or so, including Zaxxon and Wizard of Wor. I had a lot of fun playing those games with my brother back at the mall in our hometown. A wonderful period of my life, the ’80s!

Besides all the fun games, Pinballz Lakeline also serves food and beer. Mariko and I shared a nice draft brew while we played pinball with the kids. I was so much fun… I’m looking forward to visiting again in the future.

Today’s photo is of my son showing off his skills. For the post-processing of this indoor shot, I first used Perfect Exposure, which is a free plugin for Lightroom. It can quickly fix poorly exposed photos, like the ones I took in the dark arcade, which has lots of different types of lighting. Next, I adjusted the vibrance and saturation in Lightroom, added a little bit of grain, and voila! All done.

I hope you all had a great Friday as well!

おやすみなさい！

– B Barron Fujimoto

Father’s Day Happenings

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"At the Flea Market" Kyle, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/8, 1/1700 sec, ISO200
 “At the Flea Market” Kyle, 2016

こんばんは！Happy Father’s Day to all the dad’s out there!

Today was a super busy one for us because both Koa and Bay are starting week-long summer camps. First off, Koa is attending a percussion camp down at Texas State University in San Marcos which is about a 45-minute drive south from us and today was his check-in and audition. He’s pretty excited because he gets to stay over in the dorms! Plus there are a lot of fun activities planned and many different classes where he’ll learn a lot of different kinds of percussion. I think he’ll have a ton of fun! 🎼

After dropping him off, we decided to stop by the Kyle Flea Market that we passed by on the way to the camp. It was pretty fun, but super hot! Although today is only in the low 90s, the flea market warehouse was not air-conditioned so it was sweltering! 😅 We didn’t find anything worth buying but it was still interesting to see how much junk was for sale.

"Homemade SIgnage" Kyle, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/3.2, 1/8000 sec, ISO200
 “Homemade Signage” Kyle, 2016

Next up was lunch, which I got to decide since it is Father’s Day. I was presented with two choices: Shake Shack or Burgerfi. I think I was pretty much guided to choose Burgerfi which was fine with me. The burgers were yummy and it really hit the spot! I chose the “Conflicted Burger” which was one meat patty and one veggie-patty. It was pretty good, but I think I should have just gotten a double-cheeseburger with jalapeños, which is exactly what Bay ordered. Mariko had a cheeseburger with fried egg, and I had a bite… definitely a good combination!

"Three Burgers" Austin, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/5.6, 1/100 sec, ISO2000
 “Three Burgers” Austin, 2016

Next up on our Sunday list was to visit the UT campus to check out where Bay’s 3D Printing & Product Design camp will be held. Mariko will be dropping him off and picking him up each day so she wanted to make sure she knew the location. Once we checked it out, we walked to a cream-puff bakery called Cream Whiskers for some ice coffee and matcha cream-puffs. It was yummy!

When we left the bakery, it was close after 6pm so we headed home and then watched game 7 of the NBA finals, and that brings us up to the present!

Oh, one more thing… my Father’s Day loot!

"Father's Day Loot" Cedar Park, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/8, 1/17 sec, ISO6400
 “Father’s Day Loot” Cedar Park, 2016

I received a bunch of cool stuff:

  • Sweet treats and trail mix from my parents
  • Yo-kai Watch game for the Nintendo 3DS (or my 2DS)
  • Food-grinder attachment for our mixer so I can make fresh burgers 🍔
  • 5-year Diary. Each day has five entries, so you can easily see what you did on the same day the previous year

Now it’s almost midnight and I didn’t get to play Yo-kai Watch yet… maybe I’ll get to play tomorrow. 🎮

I hope you had a great weekend. ☺️

おやすみなさい！ – B Barron Fujimoto

A-Z Challenge – G

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G is for “Gaming”

This post has been a long time coming – about a year! I don’t play many video or computer games, but I do have a few that I like to play. Torchlight 2 is my go-to game on the PC. I’ve always liked fantasy-type games, ever since I was in elementary school and played Dungeons & Dragons with my friends. That was such a fun time! I was really into the game, but then when I was in 7th grade or so, I became more interested in girls than games!

But then video games and computers became popular and I played a lot of sword and sorcery-type role-playing games, even official ones using the Dungeons & Dragons name. Torchlight and its sequel, Torchlight 2, are games of this genre, but they are less puzzle-solving and more stat-building. I play on normal or easy mode because I don’t like the stress of my characters dying often. I just like to breeze through the game, exploring new areas, and learning new skills and Torchlight 2 is the perfect game for that. I highly recommend it, especially because it is relatively cheap on Steam. I think I bought it on sale for $10, but it is regularly only $20.

Below is a screenshot of one of the characters I play as. I took this screenshot when she was very low-level so there isn’t any real fancy gear. But I think all the characters looks so cool… the artwork in the game is really vibrant and sometimes funny too! It’s kind of cartoony and doesn’t have any realistic gore, although bashing monsters is a lot of fun. It’s a perfect, low-stress game for pure entertainment. Go play!

Torchlight 2 Outlander
Torchlight 2 Outlander

Late night

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こんばんは！Good evening!

It’s very late… in fact it is 1:41 am on Saturday morning. I am writing this right before bed, but I had such a nice time tonight I wanted to share a bit about it. I went to a birthday party 🎂 for my good friend Mikey and it was a blast! The highlight of the night for me was playing the game “Cards Against Humanity”. It was so funny and raunchy. Definitely not for kids! But so much fun!

I’ll write some more later, and post my daily photo tomorrow… I am so sleepy now and I have to wake up in about 4 hours… 😴

おやすみなさい！

-B Barron Fujimoto