How a singular dream lead to a minor obsession with a SEGA rhythm game

        Figured since today is Carnival / Mardi Gras / adjacent things like that, there's no better time to write this than right now.

        Picture it: March 3rd, 2023. I was talking with my mom about the possibility of getting the Space Channel 5 vr game (Keep this in mind as this is why I think this story is super weird). This is because a few days prior, February 25th, 2023, some of the peeps in the Gitaroo Pals discord server and I thought it would be a good idea to play Jackbox, and someone decided that as a "pregame," they would play Space Channel 5. It was fun, and I was going all about wanting the game because I thought it was cool. Flashback to the night of March 3rd, 2023, and I point out to my mom that there's a Space Channel 5 VR game on the Oculus Quest, and I wanted it (It never actually ended up happening but I fell out of it so it's okay). The weird part happens when I go to sleep.

        I wanna preface this part by saying that my dreams are weird, man. They literally have all of the inner workings of a well written book - Beginning-middle-end, conflict-resolution, etc. - but the book was written by a guy who is on UNGODLY amounts of drugs. They are so weird that some of them literally live on in the forms of multi-paragraph essays in my notes app. One I had last night where there was a bigger house right behind our actual house (which is surprisingly, a continuing plot point) where we would often retreat to, there was one I had where various rhythm game characters invaded my home and school, there was one I had where we were given daily jobs and one of them pertained to an eccentrically dressed woman who lived in a liminal space that turned out to be an entire arcade, there was one where my PE class went to a super elaborate "Soft-play" obstacle course that was orange, purple, and green, and was again, a recycle from a dream previous. This then turned out to be a nightmare as when the course was finished, my view started going fish-eye for some reason, everyone teleported to one place, someone was violently drinking water(?), and it climaxed in me coming downstairs from the upstairs bathroom in the middle of the night, opening the front door, and this man with long black hair at my door. Cut to me violently slamming it, me running while screaming "I FREAKING KNEW IT!," and me waking up. There was the two described in my Gitaroo Man Post, one where a simple skatepark meetup turned into a police chase eventually leading to my dad, my brother, and I going to a neon forrest for whatever reason, jump cutting to me taking a shower on a spaceship (what), one where my school had a fandom day - classrooms get assigned fandoms for different games, weird I know - and Jet Set Radio was my class' assigned fandom and one of my Discord friends got turned into a My Little Pony OC for whatever reason, and one that is considered my mind's magnum opus; a dream where as people were coming to our family's house to bring old game consoles, a portal storm was rocking the world, transporting my family to the middle of a stormy freeway and my art classroom? There was one moment where I almost tripped into one coming downstairs. So yeah, that's how weird I am, and a basis for this next bit.

        So I go to bed, and in my dream that night I was playing a SEGA rhythm game.. but, the wrong one. As before I went to bed I mentioned Space Channel 5, my mind cooked up.. Samba de Amigo. Yeah the one with that one World Cup song from the 90's. This lead to the entire day afterword having the song VAMOS A CARNIVAL! in my head. VAC was the one from my childhood that was in SEGA Allstars Racing, a game I had on my iPad many years ago. How apt for this dream to happen after a Nintendo Direct that announced a sequel for Samba de Amigo, Party Central, which is basically regular SDA but fancified for the new age.

        This unknowingly lead to an obsession with Samba de Amigo. Some of the music, the characters, just, all of it. Some of my Spotify plays were just exclusively VAC and Bellini's Samba de Janeiro, the other famous song from SDA. Fun fact, I listened to it so much that it became my top three 2023 song of the year according to Spotify Wrapped. Third to G Jones' Which Way (Which was my actual SOTY for 2023), and Skrillex's Rumble. 

        I want to turn your attention to something that Spotify launched about this time, maybe after. Spotify's AI DJ could turn the songs you have on repeat to basically, your own radio station with your own DJ that would play songs tailored to you. Basically, the AI DJ caught on to the fact that I was going through an SDA kick, and it just decided to go silly mode on me for some reason. Like, I counted, and there were four separate times when Spotify decided to play VAC right after some very aggressive dubstep. It was literally trolling me. It was weird.

        At a later date, I was to read up on the characters from the game. There was Amigo, the main character, who apparently grew up poor and living with his uncle. He was traveling with him where he saw a pair of maracas on display in the window of a music store, and that led him to start a band with the other characters listed. There was Amiga, who I think is Amigo's sister, but she's in the band, playing tambourine. There's Rio, plays trumpet, and eats onion rings for breakfast as a good luck charm (to the tune of Duran Duran's Rio: "His name is Rio and he eats onion rings for breakfast"). There's Linda, the dancer-bug-thing. To keep her shape, she apparently "diets on Veggie Straws," which is probably the most unhealthy vegetable related thing you can eat because it has HEAPS sodium. There's Bingo and Bongo, robotic bears who, well, play bongos, and there's Chumba and Wamba, who plays guitar and congas respectfully, and also named after the band who made Tubthumping ("I GET KNOCKED DOWN, BUT I GET UP AGAIN, YOU'RE NEVER GONNA KEEP ME DOWN!" That song.)

        So yeah. There's the weird story behind one of my interests, and is also a follow up from last Saturday's post about Animal Crossing, Festivale, and Pavè. Happy vibing everyone. Have a good Carnival / Mardi Gras / Pancake Day (Yes that is a real thing that is a real alternative to the things prior) / Whatever the heck you do today, and hey, happy early Valentines day I guess.