A Response to Two Video Game Related Sunshine Blogger Challenges Part 2

A while back, I decided that participating in “Blogger Award Challenges” felt silly, but fun. The sense of community surrounding these playful posts far outweighs the reserves that I felt about them. Recently, I had the honor of being tagged by two bloggers, Meghan Plays Games and Kelly, author of Why We Play Games for the Sunshine Blogger Award Challenge (you can take a look at their Sunshine Blogger posts by following the links above). After enjoying their fun answers to the questions posed to them by their own nominators, I had some fun writing answers to the questions that they’ve asked.

I felt like responding to two challenges at once was a bit too long for one post, so I split my replies in two! Last time, I answered Meghan’s questions. Today, I’ll answer Kelly’s questions and pose questions of my own. If you want to see my answers to Meghan’s questions, check out Part 1!

Here are the questions posed by Kelly and my answers:

1. What is your favorite theme song from a video game?

I can’t really call many video game theme songs to mind, but I don’t know if my answer to a question like this would ever not be Kingdom Hearts 1, which captivated me in middle school.

2. What is your favorite video game soundtrack?

I don’t listen to many game soundtracks, so I feel like my answer does many games an injustice, but I have actively sought out the soundtracks for Kingdom Hearts, Journey, Portal, and RiME.

3. What is your favorite video game genre?

I really love playing RPGs. Their stories and gameplay (which I know varies widely) captivate me the most frequently of any genre I’ve played.

4. What is your favorite place in a video game?

I’d say that every game I’ve ever played has had at least one place that I went back to after the storyline had moved away from that area. My most visited, though, is most likely Kokiri forest from Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I loved the idea of a hidden village in the forest, and I enjoyed the music. There wasn’t much to do there, but that didn’t stop me from going back over and over.

5. What is your least favorite place in a video game?

There’s a notorious location that you visit in one of the Halflife games called Ravenholm. I don’t remember if it is a chapter title or something that a character says (or both), but I remember it being noted in the game that “we don’t go to Ravenholm”, and, unsurprisingly, you most certainly DO NOT want to go to this forsaken city. It is here that you start encountering frighteningly fast versions of the alien-human zombies you’ve fought for most of the game, which howl and shriek from a long way off and still somehow manage to sneak up on you.

6. What video game did you find visually stunning such as the landscapes or the art style?

For landscape, I’ve been thoroughly stunned by a few different games recently. One is Breath of the Wild, which I’m playing all of the side quests because I’m not ready to be done running around its beautiful world. A second is Steep, a snow sports game with stunning scenery that I just can’t get enough of. When it comes to art style, I’ve most recently been captivated by the Ni no Kuni games, and by Child of Light for its beautiful watercolor elements.

7. What video game food would you like to try?

When I was in high school, I was playing Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town fairly often. At the end of each year, the townspeople gather and share soba as the new year roles in. I remember really wishing I could try fresh soba like that. Otherwise, I’d probably have to wish for those cute little pastries that you give your pokemon in Pokemon X and Y (I mean, a human version, since I assume they’re pokemon food and I’m not just randomly feeding sweets to animals like it won’t make them ill…).

8. What is your favorite video game series?

I’ve returned again and again for new Kingdom Hearts, Zelda, and Harvest Moon (and Rune Factory) games. I don’t know if I could choose a favorite series from these three.

9. What fictional game character would you like to hang out with?

Somehow, it seems like it would be bad luck to hang out with any game character because you never know when something dangerous is going to happen! However, I’d enjoy hanging with Aloy as long as I didn’t have to be in the Horizon Zero Dawn world.

10. What deceased video game character would you bring back to life?

All of my games are fairly low-risk, so characters rarely die permanently in either story or gameplay. Maybe the mother marowak from Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow? The mech from Tital Fall II?

11. What abandoned video game series would you like to see come back?

I mean, I wouldn’t say no to more Portal or Halflife…

Thanks again to Kelly for challenging me to the Sunshine Blogger Award! It was fun answering your questions.

Now comes the part where I come up with my own questions and challenge other bloggers. I never know who to tag because I don’t want to leave anyone feeling obligated or awkward, so I’ll only pick 5 people. If you’re not one of these five people and you’d love to take on the challenge, please do! I would be delighted to read your responses.

Here are my questions. The bloggers who tagged me typically blog about video games, so their questions are video game focused, but I don’t focus on any particular media type. That being the case, please pick your favorite content type (video game, anime, cartoon, movie, book, etc) to answer with!

If you were to suddenly have a portal that allowed you to choose one (media) world to have a picnic in risk-free with the guarantee that you’d return home, what world would you go to?
You’ve been kidnapped by a dangerous super-villain for _______ reason. What fictional character or team would you trust to come save you? Who would make you feel absolutely doomed?
You’ve been mistaken for the manager of a well-known cafe (can it serve alcohol? Sure!) and tasked with coming up with the menu for today. It’s up to you to keep up the farce! Pair three fictional characters with drinks that you think they’d love.
Choose one fictional world. If you were in that world, what kind of job or power would you have, based on what you’re like as a person in our world? Ok, now do that again, but what kind of job or power would you love to have regardless of how you are in our world?
You get to spend the day with your favorite fictional female. Who is she and what do you two do? (You can be in her world or ours!)
Has a work of fiction that you loved ever left you feeling let down by how they handled a character or social issue?
A while back, I read a book called The Dark Lord of Derkholm, by Diana Wynne Jones. In the book, two parallel worlds have been linked, ours and a fantasy world, and a corporate entity has turned the other world into an adventure park of sorts. People from our world can play as “adventurers” and go on a guided adventure through a made up scenario and after finishing this video-game-like adventure, they return home. If you had the opportunity to do this in any (media) world of your choosing, what would it be and why?
You get to adopt a pet from any fictional world you want. Why did you pick it?
When you take in (media) works, what’s something that stands out to you as being problematic or something that gets overlooked/left out?
Have you ever randomly picked up a (media) work even though you thought you’d hate it, and been surprised by it?
If you had to choose only one fictional work that you could enjoy for a whole year, what work would you choose?

Now, deciding who to tag… I know so many great bloggers! If you haven’t checked out any of these bloggers yourself, I highly recommend giving them a read.

Later Levels, who recently wrote a great post about the environmental storytelling of the Fallout series.

Kawaii Paper Pandas, who recently wrote a post examining and explaining waifu culture.

PokeNinja90 over at Blerdy Otome, who recently spread the community feelings in a blog post about where to go for engaging otome discussion.

Extra Life, who recently wrote a retro game review of the Super Nintendo game, Pilot Wings.

Auri over at Manga Toritsukareru Koto, who is working on launching a new blog series comparing manga to books of the same or similar genre.