Final Fantasy 1 Pixel Remaster Completed! - Mr. P Reviews Stuff - Ep. 03

As many of you may have figured out, I'm a bit of a nerd. Well, it just so happens that the remastered editions of some of my favorite RPGs of yesteryear have just been released on console. I of course mean nothing other than the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster series which covers the original six games on Nintendo (NES) and Super Nintendo (SNES). These came out on PC back in February of 2022, but just launched on console in April of this year (2023). Not wasting any time, I went ahead and purchased the bundle of all six and tore through the original game over a couple of days and watned to present my review here.

As expected, there have been numerous quality-of-life changes, including the ability to adjust up or down the exp and gil gained from enemies, as well as the ability to straight up turn off random encounters. Pixel art looks great on 4k and the remastered soundtrack is phenomenal, though one can always turn it back to the old chiptune music if desired.

If you haven't ever played them and always wanted to, this is the bundle for you. I don't think there are any physical copies available anywhere anymore unless you don't mind getting gouged on E-Bay.

Introduction to the Nature of God - Mr. P Talks Theology - Ep. 03

 Browsing Reddit is a good way to come up with channel content for just about anything. No matter what subreddit you go into, somebody is bound to say something inflammatory or ridiculous that can be used for show-prep. In this case, it's the r/twosentencehorror subreddit. There was a show made about "Two Sentence Horror Stories", but I never have watched it.

The impetus for what is going to be a series of videos on a theme, was one particular short story, namely this one:

Upon my request the heavenly scribe told me: "Your husband is here because he died as a Christian, your daughter is not for she lost her faith because of what your husband did to her." I wanted to protest, but then the eternal bliss of being in God's presence washed over me and nothing else mattered anymore.

The story alone is ripe with misunderstandings of eternity and the nature of heaven, but on a deeper level there is a misunderstanding of salvation, who God is, who man is, and what sin is. All of these things come into play when learning how to deal with these sorts of emotional attacks against the faith. That doesn't mean they're impossible to deal with. Far from it. However, if you don't know what you believe or what the Bible says about these issues, you'll be hard pressed to come up with a valid response to any of it.

So, for my Christian followers, I hope the coming series will be of benefit to you. If you're not, hopefully you'll learn something too, if nothing else than how to accurately represent the other side.

"My Last Duchess" by Robert Browning - Mr. P Reads Stuff - Ep. 05

Perhaps one of my favorite poems of all time, other than "Goldie Pinklesweet", is Robert Browning's famous "My Last Duchess". I remember doing a research paper in college about it and how it served as one of the best examples in poetry of a dramatic monologue. The poem itself is simple: a wealthy aristocratic man is meeting with a business partner (for lack of a better term) with whom he hopes will help negotiate a dowry for a young woman he seeks as a bride. Before negotiations take place, he decides to show the man a painting of the former duchess. In the process, it becomes very apparent that this is more than just a friendly chat. The narrator reveals through the course of the conversation just what sort of man he is and what happened to his ex-wife, now alive only through the medium of a painting, and no, it's not the fancy living paintings of Harry Potter either.

Browning expertly weaves in subtle details into the monologue giving us an insight into the narrator's psyche without the narrator specifically saying what happened, though the details are heavily implied.

Anyway, if you're not familiar with the poem, I hope this serves as a suitable introduction.

"Rejoice in the Lord" by Ron Hamilton - Mr. P. Sings Stuff - Ep. 04

 

Ron Hamilton (a.k.a. Patch the Pirate) probably did more to shape my musical tastes than any musician I've ever listened to. As much as I love the works of Nobuo Uematsu, Yasunori Mitsuda, Masayoshi Soken, numerous other Japanese composers for video games, and even bands like Metallica, Pink Floyd, and Foreigner, none of them hold anywhere near as special place in my heart as this one individual. I remember when I was still a little kid sitting in the dining room in front of our record player next to my brother and listening to Patch the Pirate records over and over again. For you Gen Z people, a record is like a giant oversized cd...then again, I may need to explain what a cd is...uh...it was a metal round thing that had music recorded on it and, before the days of mp3's, you had to figure out some way of hooking a cd player up to a cassette player to record your favorite songs onto a separate piece of hardware called a cassette tape, which was like a small VHS tape...ugh. Nevermind. It was the dark ages of having music recordings and it was awesome! We liked it! We liked it just fine! We didn't have this "technology" stuff.

Anyway, grumpy old man ramblings aside, Ron Hamilton produced numerous audio dramas for kids, beginning as something he was doing for his home church shortly after losing his left eye to cancer. Over time, it became more and more popular and he and his family (the main cast) as well as other voice actors got together to produce new family friendly stories complete with sound effects and musical numbers that ranged from teaching kids about the importance of manners to deeper songs dealing with theology and even the realities of life, such as encouraging parents to treasure the times they have with their children before they grow up. Each adventure had its own moral lesson it was trying to teach and it was always done in a fun and entertaining way for kids. Nowadays it may not have quite the same appeal since you have to use your imagination to picture the characters and settings, but for those of us who grew up on it and have imaginations, it's very well done.

Incidentally, this is what got me into my love of audio drama and audio production. If you listened to the first two Lovecraft stories I recorded, especially the first, you'll notice how I tried to incorporate sound effects and background music into them. That all stems from my exposure to that sort of thing because of Mr. Hamilton.

Ron's testimony about the song which serves as the namesake for this article and the embedded video is one of taking Paul's words to the Philippians seriously:

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice! (Philippians 4:4 NASB2020)

Paul's words weren't a recommendation as an apostle, but a command that we should always rejoice in God's provision and kindness to His children, even when circumstances would seem to dictate otherwise.

Unfortunately, Ron has been hit with early onset dementia and no longer writes music or records as far as I can tell. Fortunately, his legacy will long outlast him and live on through the countless children who grew up listening to the adventures of Patch the Pirate and his crew on the Jolly Roger and try to teach their own children the same values. I wanted to do my own recording of one of his most well known songs which also is probably the earliest one I remember hearing that blew me away as a kid.

Thanks for everything Patch.

Ron's Testimony: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mnq096XedJs Backing track purchased from Majesty Music: https://www.majestymusic.com/wings-as-eagles-pa-digital-download.html Song featured as part of the Misterslippi River Race story: https://www.majestymusic.com/misterslippi-river-race-digital-download.html

Where I've Been: My Story of Addiction and Recovery - Mr. P Talks Theology - Ep. 02

 I mentioned a while back in my video on the authority of scripture that I would be recording a video letting you all know where I had been and where I had disappeared to over the last few years. I know that there are also those who have come to this blog and my attached YouTube channel who have never met me personally so there's probably fewer questions you have about that since you probably didn't know I had dropped off of social media in the first place.

Without taking too much away from the video itself, I have struggled with porn addiction for most of my life. I realize that sounds horrifying but when you consider the fact that I'll be 38 this year (as of the time of this writing it is 2023), even if the problem didn't begin until I was eighteen, that would be twenty years which is mathematically more than half my life (not by much but you get the point). I'm not saying I got hooked on it when I was a little kid. Nothing quite that extreme. It's a problem for a lot of men and it's getting harder and harder to avoid which is why my wife and I do our best to shelter the kids from a lot of things out in the world.

Suffice it to say, my problems had gotten out of control and it threatened to destroy my marriage, my relationship with my kids, those in my church, and every other aspect of my life. Ultimately, I got involved with a recovery program and came at last to the realization that drastic steps had to be taken to correct my behavior. It also involved a lot of soul-searching and finding out what exactly it was that had brought me to this point. Only by the grace of God was I brought back from the brink and my relationship with my family and God restored.

I hope my story can be an encouragement to you all. If you're a man who also struggles with this sort of thing, I hope it's an encouragement to you to get help. Celebrate Recovery is a decent program (though I'm no fan of Saddleback Church or Rick Warren), and Battle Plan Ministries is a good resource as well. Anyway, thank you for taking the time to come listen.