I couldn’t resist starting with this pair of Escape From Monkey Island ads, which were found in different magazines from around the same time. The game came out in November of 2000, which was the perfect time to spoof what the ad on the left did! The previous year, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace was released and one of the teaser posters had a shadow of Darth Vader looming over a young Anakin Skywalker on Tatooine. It was an amazing ad for the movie and they were smart to spoof it, especially since Escape From Monkey Island was made by LucasArts (now Lucasfilm Games).

I found another ad for the game in an issue of a magazine that was released around the same timeframe and while it’s not as perfect as the one above, it shows more of the game and is very, very silly — which I love. Monkeys having vacations and Guybrush Threepwood sending back postcards where he’s getting punched by his wife, Elaine, learning about pirates, and taking MONKEY COMBAT lessons. I really like the little monkey holding up the LucasArts logo in the bottom right and looking like he’s not having a good time. Just let him party with the rest of you bros, okay?  

AD-ventures is a feature where I post ads for video games and video game-related things I’ve found while going through old issues of gaming magazines I’ve collected from numerous places over the years. There’s a whole assortment of weirdness going on with some of these old ads.

Anyways, the second half of April!

Anyways, hehe, I love Tsum Tsums with all my heart and when I saw this fabric I knew I had to get it. I had no idea what I was actually going to do with it but I was going to do something. AND I ACTUALLY DID! *gasp* I know. I mean, do you know how many mounds of fabric I have in the “i got this because it saw it and thought i’m totally gonna do something with that and haven’t yet” pile? Too Damn Many.

The skirt was one of those first-time beginner skirt patterns and I made it in one day at a friend’s house. I was scared of the pattern but that’s because I’m scared of every pattern. And also sewing.

BUT DONALD DUCK. I needed to finish the project because look how cute Donald Duck is. He’s my favorite Disney character and his Tsum Tsum is extra adorable.

I really want to play the Tsum Tsum game again but when I got a new phone cause my old one was busted I couldn’t log back into my account correctly and I LOST ALL MY TSUMS. >:| In other fun facts, I own so many actual Tsums from collecting them over the years that we decorated a small Christmas tree with them one year and a Donald Duck Ufufy went on top.

Today’s Fun With Photo Mode is the beginning of a giant mess of screencaps from Animal Crossing: New Horizons! I’ve missed some days here and there cause some days I just didn’t have the chance to pick the game up, but I’ve been trying to take a picture of my outfit every single day and this is only the start of the slew of screencaps that will be here due to that weird little project of mine, hehe. I believe I’m going to do half a month at a time and we’ll start with the first part of April when I started doing this!

(Basically, I’m bad about hoarding stuff in ACNH, especially clothing, so this way I figured I could wear a bunch of it and then get rid of pieces I won’t wear again. :D)

The one that sticks out the most in my mind is the song “Cold Contagious” by Bush. I mentioned this whole mess in the Special Place in My Heart – Myst post a good while back — it was 1996 and both Myst: The Book of Ti’ana and Bush’s Razorblade Suitcase were released. My Dad would go into the office he worked in on the weekends to get some stuff done and if I wasn’t sitting around looking at Sailor Moon and Gundam Wing pictures on the internet, I was back in the room of empty cubicles. I remember using my coat as a pillow and curling up on the desk of a cubicle in the back corner with The Book of Ti’ana in my face and Razorblade Suitcase playing on my headphones which of course, were connected to my portable cd player (so fancy!). I occasionally associate the whole album with the book, but “Cold Contagious” always really stood out because it had a certain sound and a certain feel. In the most basic of terms regarding the plot (it is very twisty and complicated but I will try to keep it simple and vague, in case you ever read it): there is a giant society and a giant city and in a turn of events (backstabbing, betraying, she’s so different we’re supposed to be a secret get her out, etc.) this giant city falls and it falls hard. So “Cold Contagious” always brings me straight to that nest I made on the desk and under the cabinets of that cubicle and straight to the fall of a city full of people who could write other worlds. I could be driving, I could be at work, I could be at my sewing machine – but if that song comes on, that’s where my mind goes every single time.

There are a number of David Bowie songs – and this is totally understandable since it was a whole Bowie thing – that remind me of Worlds Chat, which was a 3-D chat program where you picked an avatar and wandered around different areas, chatting to people if you wanted. I would never really chat with anyone. I would make my 3-D avatar as deliciously gothy as I could and meander around all the different areas. There was a cabin or something, and a garden maze type place – but obviously the best section was the David Bowie section. In 1998, David Bowie created Bowienet, which was an Internet Service Provider. It had its own forums, email and so on – it also gave members early access to new Bowie stuff. My Mom is a HUGE David Bowie fan and jumped on this right away. Worlds was included in this whole shebang, which was why they had a whole Bowie area – for all the Bowie fans to congregate and chat. There was a club, a weird intersection in a city, and a few other locations in this section and each one had a different David Bowie song playing. So if I have my library on repeat and the shuffle function decides to stop on songs like, “Subterraneans” & “Weeping Wall” from Bowie’s Low album, I will instantly think back to my tall, goth, fierce (and kind of blocky) babe and wandering around exploring the corners where other chatters didn’t bother to tread. I feel like I want to write a bigger post on this whole thing one day…

Sometime right around the end of the 90’s I was with my Dad for the weekend and we were helping some friends move. The daughter in the family, Jessica, was out of town for a bit so I stayed in her room in the new house the weekend we were there. A few days before all of this – bum, bum, BUM! — I had found a script to The Lost Boys 2 online. I can’t remember if it was supposedly “legit” or fanmade or what (since there were ALWAYS rumors about a Lost Boys 2 until it appeared in 2008). But I printed that whole beast out and stayed up well into the morning reading the whole thing. Which is embarrassing because it was pretty bad. I kept thinking, “THIS WILL GET AWESOME SOON.” Unfortunately, I had “Be Quiet And Drive (Far Away)” from the 1998 Deftones album Around the Fur on repeat just about the whole time I was reading this thing. I mean, fortunately, it was the Deftones, and Around the Fur is still a favorite album of mine – but unfortunately, that song now transports back to Jessica’s bedroom (I can still picture it pretty empty except for the bed and a vanity with a mirror cause they were still moving stuff in– BUT THAT SCRIPT I CAN’T–), with my headphones on, talking to the script about how it could be better. My “edits” were probably just as bad. The most vivid thing I can think of though, was the fact that the vanity was right across the room from the bed so as I sat and read, I would look up occasionally, at my reflection and shake my head a la Jim Halpert like, “Can you believe this shit?”

Two things that certainly don’t go together are Spyro: Year of the Dragon and Vapor Transmission by Orgy. But in October of the year 2000, they both came out. I had also just had my wisdom teeth taken out. So not only, do some of the songs on Vapor Transmission make me suddenly feel like I’m sitting on the couch running around as a purple dragon, but they remind me of sitting on the couch, completely out of it on pain medication, running around as a purple dragon. I would turn Spyro down and play Orgy instead. Did Year of the Dragon even have sound? Was Jay Gordon’s voice there? I don’t know because pain medication.

In 2001, I had discovered Adema and their first, self-titled album. I had also discovered the Twisted Metal series with the always entertaining Twisted Metal: Black that had come out the same year. My sister and I would stay up until 4 a.m. on weekends playing TM:B and we loved every minute of it, even if we were both just riding around one of the stages yelling at people and hitting them – we would especially go after the ones on scooters. I have no idea why. If we weren’t playing TM:B then I was puttering around with Adema’s album on – walking to the bus stop, writing, sitting on the computer – always Adema. They always tried to avoid the nu-metal label, which was popular and thrown around a lot at the beginning of the century, I always considered them some sort of rock – but hey, I was a fan of some nu-metal. As long as it wasn’t screaming the whole time and I could groove to it, I was good. Whatever Adema was, I was in love with that self-titled album. Since I was eating that and TM:B up every free moment of my life, it’s obvious I would put the two together now, but there was another underlying reason, I think. The Adema album had its share of angry songs (which I still love to this day – “Freaking Out” is still a go-to song for me and my husband to put on and scream along with ahahhahahahhhah) and Twisted Metal: Black was a very angry and dark game. And I was all about that. I had never played any of the Twisted Metal games before so I had nothing to go off of regarding gameplay, stories, and characters. I just remember starting the storyline with my sister watching, picking Raven as the first story to play through, and demolition derby-ing every other vehicle in my way. We ended up playing through the story mode as every single character to see their storylines. Some were satisfying, like Raven’s, others made us want to rip our hair out and sob… Agent Stone’s timeloop? NOOOOOO. Basically, I can’t hear any song from this album without heading back to Midtown and the residents (and drivers) of Blackfield Asylum.

For some reason — I have no idea how the hell this happened — it just happened to be the right timeframe and place. I got a little tired of listening to the… noise? Music? I can’t even remember — in Yoda Stories. I started listening to the recently (at that time) released self-titled Third Eye Blind album. That’s all I remember about this. Singing along to Third Eye Blind and wandering around with my favorite Star Wars characters. THIRD EYE BLIND = YODA STORIES FOREVER TO ME NOW. I DON’T KNOW.

These are only some of the instances where this happens to me and it happens all the time because if I can manage where ever I am, I will be listening to music. Do you have any songs that bring you back to a book, comic, game, movie, etc.? Let me know on Twitter — I love hearing people’s stories about this kind of stuff, hehe.

It’s 2020 sure (and what an effin’ year it is :|), but I have to give a shoutout to my Game of 2019: Hypnospace Outlaw. It recently just came out on the Switch with some new content (said new content is also available on the other versions as well for free!) and I never properly admitted my love for it on any of the blogs since I played it due to the fact that all the blogs were being edited/moved/morphed into this one — so let me say it now: THIS GAME IS PERFECTION. Especially, if like me, you were on the internet for the Y2K/Geocities/weird era of the internet. Now even if you weren’t, Hypnospace Outlaw is an insanely interesting and fun look at an alternate timeline sort of thing — but if you were it has that added touch of nostalgia.

Back in February — before the major start of the pandemic in the U.S. — Nate and I went out of town for the weekend and I brought this dress with me that I had purchased months and months before. I thought it would be a fun dress for conventions and such (haha what are those and will they ever happen again) and I also thought I could do an Abandonworn post with it for Hypnospace Outlaw! So here I am, posting the photos of it eight months after taking them. :\ It’s okay though, I can say I was waiting to celebrate the Switch release with the post, hehe.

I’m a sucker for all things vaporwave and this dress was just that, plus it had a lot of fun touches that brought me back to those halcyon days of sitting on the internet at 3 a.m. and surfing fansites on Geocities dedicated to all my favorite video games and anime series and all that jazz. Hypnospace Outlaw did that too and I found myself remembering pages I visited and people I talked to on AOL while playing through that masterpiece. I had so many specific flashbacks.

The game got me hooked on the characters and storyline too — it’s not just a gimmicky “LOL LOOK AT THE OLD INTERNET KIND OF STUFF HEHEHEH” thing. The storyline and plot are kind of silly at first but then you start digging into it and looking into the characters and background on how the whole thing started and it makes you stop and think. Sure, on the surface there’s cute virtual pets and Squisherz (ARE REALLY COOL AND SO MUCH FUN) and Teentopia but diving into it shows you a whole side that shouldn’t have come to light.

Besides all that, the soundtrack is an absolute riot.

The visceral reaction I had to hearing Nothing Left for Me by Seepage for the first time stayed with me for days. When that popped up on ZANE_ROCKS_14‘s page I just stopped and took it in — I felt like I was in high school again and really, Hypnospace is this alternate universe’s internet… Seepage is this alternate universe’s Linkin Park.

I really can’t praise this game enough. One of my favorite things that video games can do is take me to a specific place or time — whether it’s a fictional place or a warm and fuzzy memory in time and this one manages to do both of those things. Between the style, the gameplay, the music, the attention to detail — it’s like an uncanny valley but instead of it being a creepily lifelike robot or piece of CGI it’s a universe/internet so close to our own (save for the headsets and such hahahah) that I find a weird level of comfort in it. I play it and I feel like I’m home in a way.

It’s so damn good, for real. GO BECOME A HYPNOSPACE ENFORCER.

(Also, somewhat related, you’ve gotta check out VAPORGRAM. It’s such a fun app for these sorts of edits like the one I did below.)

Hellllllo and welcome to Neon Shores! I’m going to copy and paste the first post from my first iteration of this blog and then follow-up with a bit more on the intro-end.

Originally posted on August 17, 2015:

I recently went through a bunch of folders on my computer called amazingly helpful terms like “Crap”, “Shit to sort” & “SORT THIS NOW” – I moved files in folders more suited to where they needed to be. These were few of the photos in the newly created, “photos of my dumb face to put somewhere”… so, everything still needs sorting somewhat. But at least everything is in better folders than such gems as, “NOWDOTHISSHITNOWW!!”

So yeah, I’m Heather and that’s my dumb face up there spanning the years 1998 to the present. What can you get out of these photos? I like Christmas lights? And costuming? And apparently, in 1998 I was bored at a hotel and hid in the closet with a shower cap and an iron. I was in middle school then. I don’t question middle-school-Heather anymore.

This is neonshores.net and I really have no idea what will go here. Rambles about random things I remember, photos I’ve taken, things I’ve written, weird stuff I’ve made– who knows. Stuff. That’s one thing I’m sure of… there will definitely be stuff.

So if you like stuff then welcome to Neon Shores. Glad to have you.

Basically, neonshores.net was created to be the hub of my original creations — photography, stories, rambles — whatever fit that wasn’t a fanwork (although now fanworks will creep in more than they used to). Now I’m sort of soft-rebooting it here as a general creative hub. Anything I make/do/write — fanwork or original work — will be housed here.

I say soft-reboot because I’m going to move old posts I’ve written from other blogs over here so I have all of my posts and projects in one place.

So again, if you like stuff then welcome to Neon Shores. Glad to have you.

Photo Mode Friday is a weekly feature where I post shots of my adventures with either the screenshot capture feature or the photo mode feature, depending on which one the game in the post contains.

Photo Mode Friday is a weekly feature where I post shots of my adventures with either the screenshot capture feature or the photo mode feature, depending on which one the game in the post contains.

So what’s Fun With Photo Mode? It’s me sharing some of my favorites shots I’ve captured in some of my favorite games! It’s gonna be a little lax on the “PHOTO MODE” though, cause I also like to set up shots and then take screencaps if a game doesn’t have a photo mode. I’ll make a note in the post whether the shots are screencaps or from an actual photo mode in the game, but I figure it was easiest to call it “Fun With Photo Mode” and not “Fun With Photo Mode & Maybe Sometimes Screencaps Too”~

To start off, here’s a shot I grabbed with Fallout 76’s photo mode! It is of my most precious babby, the Wise Mothman, during the Path to Enlightenment event.

Bonus points for Fallout 76 for adding in an actual camera in-game you can upgrade and mod with lenses and decorative gear! Sometimes the environment doesn’t allow for photo mode due to size restrictions in some of the smaller rooms and areas, so the camera item is a must-have in those cases!