Mals' Blogging Corner

📄︱September 2026 Recap

We finally approach the ending of September. For the start of Q4 2026, it was pretty rocky starting college, but at the end, I've gotten myself back into the flow of working on schoolwork. It feels wonderful to be back after the fight of getting my Financial Aid back only for my scholarships to come in, allowing me to take some classes in hopes that I get it back. My college mail is still telling me that I still don't have it, but I can't do anything until the end of the semester to get it rolling again, especially since I'm still registered as not being qualified for it at this point. If I do better in these classes, I'll get it back, if not, then I'm just setting myself for a bad future, which I'm NOT going to do. With my gaming laptop in for repair, I can 100% focus on college. However, when I'm not working on schoolwork I've been returning to countless classics on my downtime.

The Hartford Retro World Expo

Similar to last year, my and my family alongside one friend of mine went to the Connecticut Hartford Retro World Expo for a convention dedicated to retro gaming culture, and this time, while I haven't taken much pictures this year, my experiences with the convention were just as, if not, better than what it was last year. Guests such as Angry Video Game Nerd (YES, the AVGN himself!), Kenny James (modern Bowser voice in the Super Mario franchise), Laura Faye Smith (Modern Rosalina Voice from Mario Kart 8), Jeff Steitzer (the Voice of God Multiplayer Announcer for HALO), Mark Hildreth (Terry Bogard in Fatal Fury), Macho Nacho, AND Infidelity (the developer that's converting NES games to SNES with MSU-1 support for RedBook Audio) were all in for this one, and meeting them all in person (ESPECIALLY MACHO NACHO) was a splendid experience. My brother was a new member from this trip since he wasn't here in the last one, and he has always wanted to meet AVGN in person since he's one of his most favorite classic YouTubers of all time. We all brought our 3DSses for Streetpass and gotten a decent chunk of them, and it was just a wonderful time.

I even finally gotten a physical cartridge of Gradius III and Rhythm Tengoku Gold! (Rhythm Heaven DS)!

I've been always wishing to keep a collection of the games that impacted my life the most; my greatest achievements (lol) on a dresser in my room, and these two are perfect. Gradius is one of my most favorite games of all time (and was heavy into it starting in 2013 and still going strong in 2026!), and Rhythm Heaven is also one of my most favorites. I'm grateful that I BOTH own the Japanese Original and the US Original alongside each other (I don't have the box for the US one though), and it's sitting next to my copy of Rhythm Heaven Groove. Someday I plan to get the Brave Dungeon Chronicle Pack since that and Terraria have been THE most influential games that shaped who I am in meaningful ways. I know that Terraria has two collector's editions, but I don't know which one to get, and as for the Brave Dungeon one, I don't even know if ANYONE is selling one especially since that game is more niche. Believe it or not, after reviewing the fourth episode, I thought I would set that as a perfect conclusion to my ties with the series, but nope, I still look at the series to this day.

Even if my opinions on this series has drastically changed over the years, I still can't get enough of it like Terraria, and I'm just hoping everyday that the quality of this series can come back or SOMEONE makes a new fangame to satasfy my memories of when it was good. The Legend of Dark Witch has some fangames, along with one that NEEDS TO BE PRESERVED, and all of them don't have as much popularity as the ones the main developer works on.

I even looked at the since-been-shutdown Dark Witch Wiki since when I was talking about the Terraria Metroid Mod wiki, I checked to see if there's been any matinence changes on the website, and the front page had been completely overhauled to tell new members looking at the site that it's been discontinued, and for it to be revived, you'd have to speak to the members involved in it. As much as the itch to start working on wikis after the fourth game happened, I don't know if I would want to be the owner of the wiki, BUT they did state,

"Note that some old volunteers of the wiki are able to provide limited help. They are listed below, but should be a last resort, as they do not have any major user rights anymore."

While it's using my old username, that's still me. There's some others on the right of it, but I don't know if they'd be interested in reviving it since they're likely doing a better job at distancing themselves from this series than I am.

But yeah! Before I get carried away by talking more about this, the convention was fun. :D

Gaming (and reviews) strike again

Next major thing to talk about: Gaming!

With both of my classes both being programming courses tailored to my game design degree, It's a requirement that I play a multitude of games assigned to me, which in turn massively increased the amount of "New" games I've played since for a lot of these, they were both ones I've never heard of, and ones that I haven't played until now. This, along with returning to classics on my downtime. I've gone through and completed The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap (again), and I talked about it on my blog. I also talked about HarmoKnight, but that was a shelve because I wasn't going to deal with the difficulty of the game at a time that I just wanted to vibe with games that I can vibe with (meanwhile I've went through a Castlevania game.

I've been also continuing my Rhythm Heaven Groove playthrough since I remembered I'm going through that one, but unlike the other games in the series, I'm going by it very slowly since I don't want to complete that game quickly. This game took forever to release, and I don't want to finish all of it for me to feel like playing through it all over again at some point. I know it got like twenty remixes and three different perfect campaigns, but I love taking my time with it. Sister Silver still has to be my most favorite character of the bunch... Ever since I've played her minigame in the demo of Groove, that was the point that I had no choice BUT to get it. I'm DEADLY LOOKING FOWARD FOR HER SEQUEL GAME. I can't believe I'm already having nostalgia over playing the demo of this game even though this is a recently released game...

At some point, I've done my random game batch file thing for my Steam game when I had my gaming laptop, and it picked Core Keeper. It's a game I basically only played with my sister so far, and while my primary focus on gaming is to play small games in short bursts, it's a much longer game to warrant time with, and with the release of 1.3, the Riders of the Underground update, I'll have to wait for my gaming laptop to come in from repairs to sink some time into that. I 'll be going through this game myself since this was something that I wanted to play for myself, and if my sister or I want to continue our ongoing playthrough, we can. Thank goodness Core Keeper automatically applies new update content to existing worlds! I wonder what other sandbox games does that. imagine if Terraria did something like that? This is something I wished the developers kept in mind. I'm even wondering if they'll ever work on a 1.5 update since that game contionusly gets last updates that keep the game going. KEEP IT GOING. I love every last update that you guys make!!!

Another notable game that I've been going through was the Metroid series. I've finished the original Fusion and Zero Mission, and enhancement hacks that improve on the base game: Fusion Special Edition, and Project ZM respectively. The latter, if it has a place on IGDB, I might review that one since it quite has a lot going for it. In terms of Archipelago, even though that silently exploded in popularity this month and a bunch of my favorite instances gotten updates, my gaming laptop was still in repair, and like Core Keeper, I want to keep long-term games on a pause as I go through college, but if I want to choose one or the other to have at least one to follow, it would be the former.I did make a page for The Legend of Dark Witch 4 (this can only be viewed if you're in the Archipelago Discord, I think), but as of writing this, nobody has said anything in there. Hopefully with the developer making a Unity MonoGame port of this that this game eventually gets proper modding support in the future. I'm wondering if this game can even be further optimized!

Struggling to Learn Godot

AND NOW GAME DEVELOPNMENT!

Now since this next semester started, I have no excuse not to learn Godot since I got nothing else important to do, and while I haven't done it much in the beginning portion of September, I've started using this wonderful tool that teaches any user Godot for free when I have free time not doing college work. It's been incredibly helpful and it honestly reminds me of the days for when I used to use the Rosetta Stone physical disc.

and yet despite all of this, I haven't worked on anything yet.

Even if I've been using this as helpful resource, I've been meaning to look for other ways for me to learn Godot, and I have gotten ABSOLUTELY nothing despite my attempts at reaching out to others. I've asked on Twitter, got no response. Asked on Bluesky, got no response. Asked on Discord, got no response. So right now I'm just hanging in there using this helpful tool from time to time, and I'm starting to think if I need to find more sources, I'll self teach myself. I've had enough instances where i've asked a problem i'm going for, nobody helps, and I eventually make my way through the work. i'm hoping the same can be done with developing my dream game(s) since I want to get to working on them as soon as possible, and maybe even join some Godot-oriented Game Jams, if I've could.

Website Update

My website finally reached version 1.2!!!
One of the major things about this month was **Version 1.2**, where I added a script that pulls **the latest posts that I make on Bluesky**, not counting replies from other people or stuff that I repost. This is done because I've wanted to start using my Bluesky more to continue fulfilling the contents that I've done with my now Dead Twitter, and because anything I say on Twitter is going in the deepest pits of the bad algorithm. I did have a separate 1.2 update before this one, and it was adding a comments section to my Bear Blog, but I decided the nanosecond I went through posting the updates everywhere that I didn't want to do that, and scrapped it immediately after.
Oh yeah, idk if I shared this, but anything that gets posted on my blog also gets sent in my Discord server. Once I have a rightful purposue for a server, I plan on opening this place up for everyone.

Anyways, with my site now reaching this point, I don't know what else to add to my website, so It'll be a bit before I have another creative spike that forces me to get into the habit.

Birthday Approaches (October 27th)

I'm turning 20 on the 27th of October, and honestly, I don't even know what I would even want for a gift. I have plans to do a very small Archipelago sync with my family for the first time ever (since I've been doing it exclusively with internet friends), but other than that, I pretty much have everything I wished for throughout my life, and the only thing I could think of, is like an update on games such as Valerie, Aurascope, or SOULGRAVE. Those three are my most anticipated games of all time, the ones that changed me greatly, and in the case of Aurascope, I wished I had a way to financially support them.

Similar to the others, the first time I laid eyes on this game, I immediately fell in love with it, and when they opened their Kickstarter, it felt like a betraytal that I didn't get to back the game. So many people had, and seeing them be some of the top members of the server makes me feel left out, but I don't want to ponder on this. This game means a lot to me, and even if I haven't backed this up, I'll be getting both battle and adventure when it releases and will be covering them alongside the others. As for Valerie, up to this point, I don't know how development of that game is going. It seems to be alright, with the developer showing some footages from his game from here and there, but it seems to me that development is going by smoothly. Same thing with the SOULGRAVE developer, but unlike the other two, I've been hearing nothing but issues happening from them.

They had lost their job due to AI,

Their freelancing account gotten suspended permanently,

Their game has been falsely accused of being made with AI,

..and probably more that I'm unaware of. Just like my own family and friends, I'm starting to wonder if they're doing well mentally while they're working on their game, and for an honorable mention, it seems that Decline's Drops and Dash'n'Drops' creator, Drazglb, has also experienced some negative moments during development of their game.. I'm just hoping that they're able to achieve the success they all deserve with their games, and that they're also able to keep themselves from having anymore moments like this. It's genuinely heartbreaking seeing them go through this, especially with them mentioning they might draw some naughty art for their game to catch the wind, which is something I don't really follow with personally. I have a bad past being a child and such art being almost shown in my face after someone threatened me with it, among other things.

Because of me waiting for Valerie, I've been holding off on getting any games that were on my Wishlist, and it honestly sucks that there were a few that I actually wanted to get at a VERY low price, but I can't... Until Valerie, Aurascope, or SOULGRAVE have a price I can pay, I can't get anything else...

The Ending of my Linux Journey

And to end off this September blog post, I'm officially done with my journey to switch to Linux.

Ever since 2024, I've been looking to see if I can officially replace Windows with a Linux distro since I've had enough of the changes Microsoft's been doing to it and Xbox as a whole. I've started off with Linux Mint for a while before switching back, and the thought of testing the waters has been rampant throughout Q2 2025 with me distrohopping various Debian based distros and Fedora based ones, but never felt satisfied on them.

The longest I remember being on one was Pop!OS, and that was because I've learned my WiiU Pro Controller was able to natively connect to my machine without any problems, and Terarria was running the best I've ever seen it. I've stayed on that one for a while, but it wasn't without it's compromises: Despite being on my Gaming Laptop, a MSI Pulse GL66 12UKV with an RTX 3070 Laptop GPU, and 16GB of RAM, it didn't allow my 1080p 180hz monitor to actually utilize the 180hz and kept my system at 60hz, otherwise the entire monitor would malfunction.

I had no other way besides it, and even if games such as Terraria worked fine, the whole system would lock up, and I would have to restart the whole system. So I've tried more and more distros, and at the end of the day, I went back to a severely debloated, set to Ireland Tiny11 IoT LTSC installs on both my Gaming and College Laptop. Many sources and people say there might be genuine security concerns, but I think they're trying to scare people off the option since I have NO issues with security updates, and even if I've gotten myself hacked backed in early May, it was because I was simply searching for the Gimmick EXACT:MIX soundtrack, saw someone hosting this online, and it turned out to be a straight up virus.

It was the first time I've ever experienced a genuine hack, and now I know that I should wait until ExArcadia games can be dumped so I can get the soundtrack for such. I did go with Fedora Workstation on my college laptop at various points (even one from this month) and I have to say that it would be the best, if companies and developers actually cared about keeping it intact. There's many specifics I would have to explain for that, but one drawback is that, unlike Debian that I can have a native Vesktop and Obsidian, I can't on Fedora since while there's a native Vesktop, there's only a Flatpak Obsidian, and that can't connect to the Rich Presence that Vesktop is sharing. Only on Debian does that occur, and if I can have a Debian that is just as updated as Fedora, and it either uses GNOME, KDE Plasma or Debian (and other apps such as Parsec introduce Linux support), THEN I might try it on a PC that can actually handle it. All the ones that I have are ageing, and they need to be put to rest after filling it's use when they were used.

So yeah. This marks the end of my September blog post. There was a bunch of stuff that happened, and with my gaming laptop in repair status, I can put Archipelago, and tModLoader sessions to the side to actually focus on my schoolwork for here on out. Once I get it back, I transition from bringing my college laptop to my gaming laptop to school because I need it for these classes and future classes, with the ultimate goal that I can replace this with a Framework in the far future. I hope you've enjoyed reading all of this for those in the world that still have the ability to read this much text. I hope you have a wonderful day. Please take care of yourselves.

NEW/Revisited Games I've played and/or reviewed this month:

Note: I've started playing these games in date order.

New

Revisited

Thanks for Reading!