CYBORG HAVEN: 5 Years On The Internet!!!

Well guys,

I can't believe it's been 5 years since I started writing this blog.

I want to make a proper celebratory post on Cyborg Haven 2.0, but it will have to wait a bit longer.  For now, I at least have a new cyborg drawing to go with a much-needed revamp of this blog.  Either a revamp, or a bit of some changing up to refresh it's novelty.

Still wanna keep this baby alive.  :)


EDIT:  It seems I am  having trouble customizing this simple template.  Maybe it is something to do with my Internet browser?  It if comes to it, I may just have to change the entire template itself, and I don't wanna do that because I like how simple the layout is and where I can find everything.  Bummer, man!

SONIC’S 23rd ON THE 23rd OF JUNE!!!!

Wow, so it’s Sonic’s 23^rd on the 23^rd of June!  How does that happen?!  It’s happening.  As I’m writing this I am listening to Sonic Radio on iTunes.  As long as I am home on the 23^rd of June, each time I will celebrate part of the day by listening to Sonic Radio on iTunes to some favorite remixes, favorite OST tracks, and new ones I’ve never heard before that make the experience such a treat.  I get so many smiles from this pastime.

I did this last year too.  Last year it was an event called Project 24, where several SEGA online radio stations were scheduled to host a radio show each hour playing specifically remixes of music from Sonic video games.  I was able to listen to a lot of Sonic music remixes that I’ve never heard before.  It was an amazing experience, so amazing that I tried to find some Sonic-related podcasts that contained a lot of those remixes.  I was on a crazy search for really cool Sonic remixes.

I am still collecting remixes. Mostly from iTunes podcasts, OC Remix and the Sonic Stadium Music Depository of remix albums.

Lately I’ve been distracted with another fandom: Transformers.  I have been neglecting my Sonic games for the last few months.  But seeing as it is Sonic’s 23^rd, I am brought back to appreciating my favorite childhood video game character again.  Sonic the Hedgehog has been a big part of my childhood and I don’t want him to stop being a part of my life.

Last year I was playing Sonic Rivals 2 at least two times a week.  I always played as either the three hedgehogs Sonic, Shadow and Silver, or Espio the Chameleon.  It is a nice escape.  But I haven’t touched my PSP for quite a few months now.

Ah…!   Gamma E102's theme song is playing now!!! Yay!!!

Sorry, I had to say that.  I love that robot.

I’ve tried to get back to Sonic Unleashed.  I didn’t earn any new medals for daytime or nighttime.  I played “Dragon Road—Day” a few times and had fun, but didn’t improve score by too much.  The music track for this Day Stage always makes me smile through my fails.  Hah hah. 

I’m listening to Sonic Radio now, and then I’ve got other things to do, then later in the day I’ll log in and listen to it again.  And I may visit some of the Sonic websites to see what other people say about Sonic’s 23^rd.

Oh, "Symphonic Ruin" is playing now!!  This is the remix that made me want to collect more Sonic remixes!! (see post here to read more...)

Well Sonic, it’s your 23^rd birthday/anniversary today, so Happy Birthday, I love you, and keep on runnin’!

After thought: a link to the post about my first true encounter with the Sonic the Hedgehog video game.

1991—Sonic the Hedgehog
http://cyborghaven.blogspot.com/2013/09/my-sonic-fan-girl-chronicles-chapter-1.html

My Anniversary of Beating the Game: Sonic Adventure 2

I meant to post this on March 22, but life got in the way.  So here it is,...the beginning of a thorough reminisce of my favorite Sonic game of all time, Sonic Adventure 2.

May 22, 2002.  So this was…12 years ago!  Man, I feel so old.  I was in 11^th grade.  It was on a Friday night, and for dinner I had buffalo chicken wings and the “Mr. X” episode of The Simpsons was on.  What time did I start?  My spring break was starting the next Monday and I was looking forward to basking in the joy that is beating the game, but I ended up being depressed not only because I beat this game.  I was depressed because Shadow’s story ended in Sonic Adventure 2.

Or so we thought!


I still think about it every once in a while.  It was probably one of the most triumphant—and bittersweet—finishing of a Sonic game I’ve ever experienced. 


The reason why I am posting this little bit of my memory about the night I finished the game, is because I am going to refer to my diary and document my writings about what I thought or liked about Sonic Adventure 2.  Of course, Shadow the Hedgehog is the #1 reason why I needed the SEGA Dreamcast in the first place—the reason why we got one at all, thanks to Archie Comics' Sonic the Hedgehog #98..  When the TV ad for SA2 aired, we didn’t have a Dreamcast.  It was then we realized we needed to upgrade from SEGA Genesis.
 
“Throw It All Away” is still my favorite theme song for Shadow.  It was different from the usual rock music that would be associated with Sonic. The first part is not sung, it is said, and it made me nervous…but like a good nervous?  I don’t know what to call the genre/style of Shadow’s theme here… a cross between electronic and eclectic?  Techno mix?  I dunno.  But it certainly was a different mood you don’t get with theme songs of other characters. 


I am also watching the cut-scenes again from the game to have a direct refresh of memory, since I haven’t touched this game for um…about 10 years. I can watch them knowing now that Shadow is okay (at least maybe 75% of Sonic fans think so) but I will also be reminded of how shocked or surprised I was when I witnessed what was in my opinion the biggest moment for me in SA2: Sonic and Shadow joining forces and turning Super together!

[Sigh]…so the last two weeks of March always feel different because Sonic Adventure 2 was the video game that changed me the most as a Sonic fan-girl.  It is significant to me in the fact that this was around the time I finished the game.  And I don't think I shared a lot of my feelings or experience about this game because I wasn't presently playing it.  Plus there were other games I was playing.   But I have to share them soon, because SA2 is an important part of my gaming history, my gaming experience.


Should I make this part of the Sonic Fan-Girl Chronicles?  I probably can.  I meant to do it as part of the series anyway, but it's just been delayed for a long while.  It's finally coming.  Too bad I couldn't post it toward the end of March.   It will have to be in April, then.  I have to still document and collect some more memories/journal entries about my time playing Sonic Adventure 2.


Come back again soon!  I'll have some treats to share.  ^__^

Four-Year Anniversary of Cyborg Haven: Blog of a Gamer Girl

Four years ago on September 3^rd, I launched Cyborg Haven: Blog of a Gamer Girl.  I had wanted to start this blog earlier than 2009, but while I was attending CSUN, I didn’t have the time to commit to it, let alone know what I wanted to write about or how to design it.  It would be my very first blog, so I didn’t know the routine of creating a blog.

I first heard of a “blog”—web log—back in 2006, when one of my instructors in my previous college suggested Blogger to students as a method of writing journals for the reading we do for the class.  It was an interesting idea: an online journal for reading assignments.  I was new to doing that sort of thing, and I wasn’t comfortable with writing for the public quite yet—not the World Wide Web, at least.  I think I just used a folder with fasteners to hold lose paper together and used that as a notebook for my reading journal.

Then in 2008 I was re-introduced to Blogger in a Popular Culture course.  There was even a book all about blogging as a recommended text for the course.  It is called The Rough Guide to Blogging by Jonathan Yang.  It wasn’t required reading.  But I knew that eventually I wanted to write a blog of my own (because for the class we were going to have group blogs not individual ones).  I at least read what I needed for the blog me and my group would write and maintain, but after graduation in 2009, I returned to the blog book and read up on Blogger, tags, HTML, and design tips on things such as font, template and background.   I also had to think about what topic I wanted for my blog:  what topic or aspect about my life would I be able to have something to write about more often than most?  I didn’t want to write about my everyday life:  I wanted a topic I thought would be fun to update progress or reactions to.

I decided on Blogger as my host because I was introduced to it twice before and it was one of the simpler ones, plus I already had a Google account when I made my Gmail, so I just sign in with my Gmail. 

I forgot how exactly I came to the decision, but I decided that videogames would be the topic of my blog.  Video games played by me, a girl.  But what should I title it?  Well, before I realized how much of a robot enthusiast I was, I came up with “Cyborg Haven”, which made me think of a human connected to a computer or a television set.  This online journal would be a place where one who is a causal gamer girl (who feels out of place with other girls who don’t play video games) can go to rant or reminisce or gush or fan-girl about topics related to videogames, such as favorite characters or new videogames I’m looking forward to trying out or owning.  I ultimately had to add the subtitle “Blog of a Gamer Girl” because I didn’t want to confuse other geeks about what kind of blog it is.  So the full title on the top of the blog became “Cyborg Haven: Blog of a Gamer Girl,” which may be longer than it should be, but I’m happy with it.

Keeping the blog was also a way to keep my typing skills.  In addition, I had a way of keeping a log of what video game I played and when, and what I did, and how I felt at the time.  I love how I can search for the video game subtopics by tags that I give them, such as Nostalgia and Reminisce, Progress, Mega Man X, or Sonic the Hedgehog.

Then the design questions came up.  I wanted to put a picture of my own creation, not someone else’s picture.  I spent about an hour a day for a few days on Microsoft Paint 2002 to draw a cyborg girl specifically for this blog.  NOTE:  For the 5-year anniversary of Cyborg Haven, I may place an entirely different drawing of a cyborg girl for the top of the page.  Maybe then my drawing skills will have improved.
 

The reason why the background color is a dark navy blue and the text light gray is because I figure that if anyone is reading this late at night, it should be easier on the eyes, rather than having dark text against a bright white background.  It could be dark green…or dark red…but the blue is a bit more calming than the other colors.  Even purple might not be bad if I give it the right hue.

As for how often I will be posting on Cyborg Haven: I realize that some of my posts have been few but big.  I think from this point on, I might try something and post more often but keep the posts down to two big paragraphs or three shorter paragraphs.  If I want to update what missions, stages or tasks I’ve accomplished in a video game, I can list them and talk briefly about one or two of them in detail.  Eventually when I start working, hopefully around mid-autumn, it may be harder to get a chance to play a good video game session.  I don’t want to stop writing for Cyborg Haven.  My interest in video games should survive even when my lifestyle gets busier.

Here’s to another year of blogging about my favorite childhood pastime: playing video games!  And yes, it’s not just a “childhood” pastime.  You’re never too old to try new things.