The year now behind us, what were your highlights?
For me it was getting out of a terrible job, finishing a few art projects, a brief romance, the new Aphex Twin album and for vgm: getting a copy of Tengai Makyou Zero Digital remix, a sweet gem.

Let's save our 2014 VGM releases for the year-end poll, which will be going up shortly.

As for entertainment / pop culture stuff, I kept up much more with the pop music and EDM scene this past year, mostly thanks to being back in the USA and having Spotify available (and to a lesser extent SoundCloud, though it looks to be rising). There's a lot of crap to sort through, but it's nice to have dozens of great tracks from the year to show for it.

The combination of the great dollar/yen ratio and learning how to use Amazon Japan without a middleman really opened things up for me, on the collecting front. I probably nabbed around 60 or so VGM albums throughout the year, which is considerably more than than the last 5 years combined! Zuntata Guten Talk, Estpolis Biographies, Falcom Special Box 95, Music from Ys and Gamadelic Delicious Selection were some of the last remaining "holy grails" for me to knock out and they were quickly taken care of for relatively cheap prices vs what I'm used to seeing (anyone remember when Estpolis regularly went for $500?) . I'm shocked how cheap older Falcom CD's are valued. Also got to feast on some of the late 80's/early 90's Jpop that is scarce over here, but can be had for a song in Japan. So happy to have found the Missing Personz...lol.

Also made some adjustments to my listening setup and have spent a lot of time relistening to a lot of stuff from the past couple years. Really made it a point to highlight my favorites, so I know which songs to keep going back to. I added these guys to the mix:

http://hometheaterreview.com/sony-hap-s … -reviewed/
http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/luxman3/100.html

As for videogames, went back to the NES on basically a full-time basis and haven't looked back. Getting more interested in speedrunning and even just replaying or learning older games. I'll probably end up buying a flashcart, since the prices for the few games I need are so inflated. I'm so glad I never replaced my tube TV. A few newer games got my attention: Guilty Gear Xrd, Shovel Knight and Mario Kart 8 (not sure how much time I'll put into the new Smash, but I have that too...I'll at least play through the game with each character and get stuff unlocked).

Fun year!

The most significant event of 2014 for me was reading the Patternist series by Octavia Butler. In second place was the Orthogonal series by Greg Egan. My greatest author discovery was Robert Bloch. He's been dead for 21 years, but there's so much great fiction out there that even some of the best can escape my attention for decades. After I had read some Bloch stories, I found out he also wrote Psycho. I never would've suspected that, since I stumbled upon his humorous works.

I decided that I don't care for emulation via a PC and I luckily saved one of my tube sets, so now I just need to acquire a NES and a flashcart. I almost bought a PS4 and several survivor horror games, but I don't have the spare time to fully appreciate what the game designers have made. I'd have a few moments here and there but no solid temporal blocks that I could dedicate, like in the days when I occupied a basement and worked part time. I'd love to get back in gaming (current games), but I'd need a way to manufacture time or print my own money.

In old game music, I'm particularly happy about having acquired all the Konami Battle albums as originals, as well as almost every Konami album I approve of. The only 2 Konami albums that were difficult to acquire were Contra Spirits and MIDI Power Pro6; the rest were cheap and easy - even Axelay. I am the happiest of all, though, for having finally obtained Chachamaru Game Music. It's not a great album, but it provided me with years of frustration (which I disturbingly enjoy).

Bloch is great. I read American Psycho which is inspired by the original Psycho, and I have to say I did not like it. While it may have had some great moments, for the most part I felt American Psycho was more shock and awe than anything else. Little suspense, and frankly little story. I realize what the author was trying to say, but I felt it was overall an empty experience. That said, if you're looking for great (sometimes humorous) classic crime/suspense, I encourage you to read Cornell Woolrich whose best known work is "Rear Window" (as in the Hitchcock classic). To be honest, Rear Window is far from his best work in my opinion!