This blog's title might be too obvious for what it is about. If it isn't I'll clear it right away: I didn't became some kind of pastry.

Some people might have noticed by now. I changed my avatar on several websites, added some strange or silly comments here and there and those that are part of the XFGM team probably noticed my increase in interest into My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic through the latest news and my will to support new MLP-related games (which was originally part of the related news but I don't want to go into details for some reason).
So yes, I became a brony, basically a fan of what's related to the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic TV show.

How did it happen? I can't tell exactly. I apparently felt the first symptoms a bit more than three weeks ago (my last records tend to point it to mid-Febuary). First what was MLP for me before? And what is it actually? I've known it for as far as I can remember as a brand for girl toys from Hasbro. Needless to say I've never been attracted the slightest to these things even though I could see these things all around during my childhood (I even wondered how it could actually sell). More recently I saw pictures of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (lets relieve my fingers a bit and call it 'MLP FiM') growingly popping up about everywhere and I deduced from it that it came from a new TV show for kids (thanks Captain Obvious!). What disturbed me at this time was that it mainly came from 4chaners (which I had a slight interest in at the time) and trolls. Why? Why did those... special people spread such silly and girly things? I didn't go any further than that... until the phenomenon became too big for me to continue to ignore it.

I became curious and tried to know where all this hype came from so I threw away all my prejudices and decided to watch the first episode. Ok. It was... fine I guess? Indeed childish but... well, sorta entertaining after all, definitely not what I anticipated at first (I actually smirked and laughed aloud more...

Now that Battle Moon Wars is finally supported, I decided to continue with my Type-Moon frenzy by purchasing official copies of Melty Blood: Act Cadenza ver.B and Tsuki-bako from Palet Mail Service, a very interesting online store if you're looking for rare Japanese goodies.
A few weeks after my purchase I received their newsletter showcasing new games additions to their shop. I browsed it half-heartedly and one of those titles appeared to my eyes, making me jump from my seat: Eternal Fighter Zero! It's a fighting game I've tried years ago, making characters from romantic animes/visual novels such as Ayu Tsukimiya (Kanon) or Misuzu Kamio (Air). Air was one of my most favourite animes of all time and having characters from it in a 2D fighting game really made me happy (and have big laughs).
I was surprised because last time I checked this store I thought only Melty Blood and BlazBlue were sold there as fighting games. But I noticed I didn't do my search the right way, I searched in the Fighting games category for the PC Soft (General Item) platform but Eternal Fighter Zero was in the Doujin category so of course I redirected my search there and... I shouldn't have. There are dozens of fighting games available, and 3/4 of them I've never even heard of! Man, I'm not sure I'll be able to take care of all of them anytime soon.

Unfortunately, my recent love for Nendoroids (an illness I got since I visited Brussels' Japan Expo where I got my first collection piece -Hiiragi Kagami cosplaying Hatsune Miku- two weeks ago) hurt my wallet pretty badly.
So I'll make an order once I get my Christmas bonus (probably in early December) and intended to start with Eternal Fighter Zero and Big Bang Beat (a game I only briefly played) but then I noticed a strange picture in the list, a game that parodied the Final Fantasy VIII cover. I thought to myself "A parodic Final Fantasy fighting game? Sounds interesting, let's check it out!" but I noticed it was nothing related to Final Fantasy. And I wasn't...

I'm a Type-Moon fan. I don't really remember since when but it's related to Tsukihime. I started to watch the anime (which was only average in my opinion), played most of the Melty Blood games (which my avatar comes from by the way), almost completed the original visual novel (I still need to complete Hisui's and Kohaku's routes!) and recently purchased the Tsukihime and Melty Blood mangas (the sequel is not yet available in my country *sob*). Meanwhile, since it's the other Type-Moon major creation, I documented myself and watched the Fate/Stay Night anime (I still have a long way to go with this one's products but as soon as I've finished with Tsukihime I'll marathon this series!). Also, since I saw this official preview of their Carnival Phantasm, I decided that I HAD to watch this one as well! The first episodes have been released recently by the way.

I was thirsty for some Fate/Stay Night game, and thanks to digitalgate that reminded me that Japanese games were available for purchase at Melonbooks (which helped me to have Ragnarok Battle Offline supported), I was browsing this website in order to find a fighting game similar to Melty Blood (I saw some tempting screenshots on the web, but nowhere to purchase it) but instead I fell on THIS. It took me seconds to find an English patch for this game and I then purchased it right away!

Battle Moon Wars is not the game I was originally looking for but it seems to be a great RPG that combines Tsukihime and Fate/Stay Night worlds (just like Carnival Phantasm does). While I was writing this blog entry I downloaded and installed the game so I'll try it right away. And expect official support for Xfire TBA soon!