RetroAchievements, a football match, and visits - W30
My weeknotes from July 21 to 7, 2026! Lots of gaming shenanigans, lots of visits from friends and one epic animated movie!
It feels like not a lot happened this week. My workplace has been rather boring, my gym-going is pretty standard, there were a lot of things happening on my gaming side, and such, but well, here’s a summary of things.
Oh right, the weather. This week was rather sunny for once, seems like the rainy days are coming to an end, at least for now. Did I mention my house flooded for like three days? It was only in short periods though but they were quite frantic moments. Basically water rose from the toilet and the shower drain. There was something stuck in the plumbing (I think they were tree roots) which made things a mess. Thankfully the water wasn’t really dirty nor stinky, we just had to do open the door while it rained and lead the water outside. All of that happened in previous weeks though, not this one.
🕹️ I set-up RetroAchievements on my Anbernic handheld, I tried plenty of games because of it which I’ll mention later. In case you are curious, I simply installed the RAOfflineProxy and followed the instructions from the repo, after logging in to my account in the device, I had no issues whatsoever. Great stuff!
📷 I figured out how to take screenshots with my modded Nintendo 3DS, you just hold L + Down + SELECT, and that opens up the Luma menu, from where you can take a screenshot! I then used SFTP to transfer those files to my phone. I do admit I still prefer taking pictures of my 3DS, The screen looks better, as the screenshots are rather low res.
🌮 There have been be a lot of family and friend visits this week. These are friends I had not seen for five or so years, it was nice to catch up a bit. We went out to a few restaurants and had some of the local snacks and the like, you know, touristy stuff for people visiting our city. Had a lot of fun!
🚲 Because of all the visits, this is the first time where I did not go cycling at all. This was a bit sad but I don’t feel bad about it that much, because I replaced it with another exercise, which I’ll mention below…
⚽ For the first time in ages, I played football with some kids in the block. I rarely do this but they were just two kids (like 15 or so years old) and they seemed to be looking for a cascarita—that’s how Mexicans refer to street football games, another term would be “retas”—we played for almost two hours and it was really awesome! I was terrible though, it was just a quick 3 vs 3 and although I scored half a dozen goals, they’d score like, 20+, I was teaming up with the oldest kid and the younger ones were ruining us. I had fun nonetheless.
🎧 Gotta say I have finally started to listen to some more episodes of the Wolf 359 podcast drama and I got to some of my favorites of the whole show! I am really looking forward to completing it again.
🎵 Also I’m still working on my review of Transistor but I purchased the soundtrack on Bandcamp!
Collage of the week!
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## Gaming
My gaming has been a mess this week, in the best way possible.
Right when I thought I would have plenty to play with on my 3DS, I decided it would be a good idea to set-up offline RetroAchievements on my Anbernic handheld. Once I had the proxy working, I went on a quest to try out some games!
The first one was **Astro Boy: Omega Factor**, one of those Game Boy Advance games that have a lot going on. I have already played it for hours before, and reached its final stage, however, this game has multiple endings and some tricks up its sleeve, don't sleep on it! Not your regular beat'em up at all. In any case, RetroAchievements worked!
After that I tried some other shorter titles, such as **Donkey Kong (1994)**, which I had never tried---when I did I lost all my lives in the first stage---so I started over and have had way too much fun! The pixelart and the music, the mechanics are all there! Truly lovely game for coffee breaks and quick two-minute sessions.
Another title Game Boy game I tried out of nowhere was a homebrew game called [**Jabberwocky**](), you can get this one from itch and it's just a short little story that takes about 20 minutes to complete. There is like one or two puzzles and it's mostly all about the character and writing. It was very fun and got me to laugh a bit, and it had achievements!
The last of my geek time was spent installing [Dusklight](), a reverse-engineered port of **The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess** that works on Linux like a charm. I only saw the starting menu and the first dialogue box, I closed the game soon after, ready to go whenever I'm up for it.
The one game that caught my eye the most this week was **The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time**. There's a reason I ended up writing a whole post [about the beginning hours of the game](/blog/return-to-oot/) sharing my experience and comparing it to when I played it as a youngling. I've made so much progress and I truly love the experience so far. After the post I have already completed the Dodongo Cavern dungeon, obtained all the Great Fairy powers a truly timeless game already, for real!
That isn't to say that my interest for **Fire Emblem Awakening** has diminished in any way! Since I'm playing Ocarina along with Syl, I wait for her to catch up while I return to this one. I have made a few more battles and leveled up a lot of characters that haven't seen enough attention from me. I have been focusing on Sumia and Stahl, two characters that weren't even level 10 for a while. I pair them up with high level characters and play on Auto mode in some of the low level battles in the map. Of course, I also progressed through the main story, unlocked one more paralogue (I have like three pending) and reached chapter 19 of the main plot. It's been an entertaining journey!
## Watching
It's finally out, the one and only **Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender** on *Paramount+*! I decided to wait and pay to check this one out, and I must say, it was absolutely incredible! The animation team did their absolute best in every frame of this film, it was a joy to see the gaang together saving the world once more.
Don't get me wrong, the film has some issues and it is carried by nostalgia in some of those, but that doesn't make it any less epic for me, I love the Avatarverse (not the James Cameron one, though it has earned its place by now I think) and I want more works based on this franchise. Epic stuff, it healed me, removing the bad taste the Live Action show has left in me so far. I really wish they eventually give it a proper release on theaters, it really deserves a watch on the big screen.
## Reading
- ✨ **Centuria** by Tori Kuramori - Up to chapter 2. It's about a young man sold to slavery, who experiences kindness for the first time while sailing across the sea, with another hundred slaves. However, a storm wreaks havoc, a cruel deal with a god is made, and he is given extraordinary power, at the cost of an innocent life. He will use this strength obtained through to fight for a better life and protect a baby, the only other survivor left in his care. So far I enjoy the art and the plot, and we'll see how the story evolves over time....
- **Blue Lock** - Up to chapter 354. The match against England is finally going to start, so I am looking forward to that. The pacing has been quite slow as the set-up was being done, but I'm looking forward to see what happens!
- **Uncle from Another World** - Up to chapter 25. I forget how this manga has chapters above 30+ pages long, only three were read but it continues to be very funny to me.
## Around the Web
### Blog posts
- [I Don’t Think I Can Accept Roblox](https://discardpile.pika.page/posts/i-dont-think-i-can-accept-roblox) - A pretty nuanced article on one of the most popular videogames of modern years. It's a long one!
- [Postliterate America](https://janerationx.me/posts/postliterate-america) - Once again, *The Machine Stops* by E.M. Forster continues to predict how things would end up for us. Great post.
- [January 8th, 2020](https://brandons-journal.com/post/january-8th-2020) - An incredible trip to the past, when Brandon started his blog and when he tried to keep his blog positive and fun. This has been challenging to keep up for him lately, but he still wants to.
- [Not Logging, Just Blogging](https://syls.blog/not-logging-just-blogging/) - Syl has had a difficult time keeping up with tracking absolutely everything and has decided to step away from trying to do something she doesn't enjoy as much, totally valid! Especially if it means the few games and media mentioned are those that she truly loves!
- [I Guess I'm Playing The Long Game Now](https://brainbaking.com/post/2026/07/i-guess-im-playing-the-long-game-now/) - Wouter has been having some parenting issues, dealing with the pressure of it all. I am no father and I'm not close to being one, but I appreciate his outlook on this post.
### YouTube
Once again, too many videos to really explain here, just a short one liner once again.
- [Games That Are Beyond Comparison](https://youtu.be/w3vdfjMFII4) - Featuring 13 Sentinels and some others.
- [The Last Honest Movie Star](https://youtu.be/1leVuo5M6w4) - Surprisingly awesome documentary on Matt Damon.
- [I Made “Elden Ring” on the N64 (And you can play it)](https://youtu.be/wgg7pXWg3h4) - This looks incredible though it's a single boss.
- [Should you buy a $1 PS3?](https://youtu.be/rvjhRmXramc) - The answer is yes and now I'm in danger.
- [Why the Ice Arrows Accidentally Became Useless](https://youtu.be/vusoGpkndDo) - On some hints at early plans for Ocarina of Time that were scrapped.
- [Perfect Coffee Break Games](https://youtu.be/_RPiYvEvesE) - Short retro games to play.
- [Zelda But it's a Modern Game (FULL MOVIE)](https://youtu.be/rIssjB5S6mM) - This is a trainwreck I couldn't stop watching.
- [I Tried to Beat the First Zelda Completely Blind](https://youtu.be/93zjLkJmT5k) - A very entertaining playthrough.
This is day 4 of [#100DaysToOffload](https://100daystooffload.com)
Comments
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It's been a while since I've written a proper update on how my gaming has been in general! Especially the Summer Game Challenge and my spending habits, as well as what I'm playing at all!
