Checking In (Sunday 13 April 2025)

It's probably super, super, SUPER late to say this but Happy 2025! I hope that you've been keeping well so far, and that you will forgive me for the silence since my previous post near the end of last year. My aim to get back into the audio content in January flopped because I just couldn't squeeze in the time for it in between the offline family business work and the walkthrough for Pokemon Blazing Emerald which I still haven't finished yet. I've also been helping out my cousin Val on her Whatsapp Channel, which she uses mainly to promote her appearances on the radio station she works for. My idea for the channel was to make it a mini radio station where each day of the week you'll find a Top 5 Songs of the Day DJ set posted. Each day is themed around different genres:

Monday - R'n'B (previously Mondays were for R'n'B and Pop music)

Tuesday - "Cool" music e.g. Ambient/Cityscape and Hip Hop (previously Tuesdays were just for Hip Hop)

Wednesday - Soul, Jazz, Afro music, Funk, Disco, World, 70s music

Thursday - "Throwback" music e.g. 80s and 90s Pop music

Friday - modern Pop (previously Fridays were for House and Dance music)

Saturday - Weekend House DJ Set

Weekends are also when I share documentaries that I think are worth checking out. The inspiration for the daily multi-genre songs of the day comes from James Evan Pilato's Media Monarchy radio show, a big shout out to him. I'm open to taking requests but there aren't a lot of subscribers to the channel yet so for the time being the music selections are my own. Hopefully as the channel grows it will be much more interactive. If you are interested in checking out the channel and getting involved with song requests, articles that you want to share or documentary recommendations, then here is the invite link https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029Vaf7ZPyG3R3q9XYImh0B and this is the email address for contacts channelqval@xmail.net

So I've decided to pause on the audio content and focus on finishing the walkthrough, the good news is I'm almost done with the main game portion. Got all the Gym Badges, caught the Regis and Rayquaza, and what's left now is completing the 7th Trick House puzzle challenge, doing a brief backtrack run for HM Waterfall-required areas THEN it's off to Victory Road and the League before covering the post-game content. I'll admit, going into the game I was motivated and interested to see what Blazing Emerald offers to refresh the experience of playing Emerald again...but by the time I got halfway into the game I was bored. The game is basically regular Emerald but with a handful of new areas to check out for special Pokemon, some regional variants and new Moves and Abilities, with a number of regular Moves getting tweaked e.g. a Move which didn't have 100 Accuracy in the normal game now has that. The story in general is the same, the map of Hoenn in general is the same and the Trainers don't offer much of a challenge in terms of having Pokemon holding battle items outside of one team member holding a Berry (this is the case with the Gym Leaders despite having higher level Pokemon than their regular Emerald counterparts). The game is a good example of why I don't play and write walkthroughs for difficulty or enhancement ROM hacks in general, because a lot of them just contain a bunch of Quality of Life features, tweaks, multiple generations of Pokemon but little to no effort to "enhance" the original plot or the map of the region that the game is set in. I've only played 3 enhancement hacks so far in my 10+ years of playing ROM hacks - Pokemon Crystal Clear, Pokemon Righteous Red and now Pokemon Blazing Emerald. Highly unlikely I'll be playing any other hacks like this next time, certainly not for walkthrough purposes. 

Once the Blazing Emerald walkthrough is done, I'll take a short break from writing walkthroughs so I can work on the audio content and figure out a decent schedule for how to release episodes. Please be patient for just a little while.

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday and have a great week.