Vibe Check #17 (February 2025)

Welcome to the 17th edition of our monthly Vibe Check (2nd edition for the year 2025), where we discuss anything related to Japan, Japanese culture, anime, or anything that comes to mind from the past month. So sit back, relax, and enjoy your reading. 

Check #1: Hatsune Miku and Fornite

I was playing my PS5 a lot more than I expected, and Fornite is one of the games I've played a lot more than usual Usually, when it comes to Fortnite, spatial awareness has been an underrated challenge for me. On one hand, there are times I can adjust myself as quickly as possible. On the other hand, I'll just be running to the nearest circle, and BAM! Sniped from about 150m (490ft) and ranked 54th.

Fortnite is one of those games where you can do well in the first match, but the next match you'll be out before you even breathe your first breath. 

In February, there was a skin that grabbed my full attention. It was the Hatsune Miku skin with a Miku dance. The moment I bought that skin, I (all of a sudden) started playing a lot better. 

My average ranking for 10 games would be about 45th. With the Hatsune Miku skin, I weirdly started having an average ranking of 24th. A good chunk of the games are even in the top 5 which I only have one Victory Royale for this chapter, but just a bunch of heartbreaking games where I ended up being ranked 2nd, 3rd, or 5th. 

Plus, seeing Hatsune Miku on a video game outside her original games looks nice. I like how Fortnite made the design for her when the chapter continued. However, before all this, I wasn't fully into Fortnite. There were games that I was more into than Fortnite such as Super Smash Bros Ultimate, Forza Horizon, Judgment, and Mario Party.

That means I would be playing Fortnite as Hatsune Miku more often! I might even get some of her songs on my phone~

Check #2: Japanese PS5 Games?

As I am playing Fortnite with Hatsune Miku and doing detective stuff from the Judgment series, I found another game that's a Japan-only exclusive! 

Although I played a lot of different sports games in my life, baseball games are the only type of sports games I rarely play. For soccer, I have Mario Strikers Charged. For basketball, I had Wii Sports Resort. American football? ...I guess Madden when I was super younger...

The only two games I used to play baseball in console is Mario Super Slugger and MLB Power Pros (in Japan's version 実況パワフルプロ野球）. Power Pros are a lot more realistic and I get the chance to preview what was the hype of the game, and I loved the game when I played it in the past.

However, there was a game where it caught my interest named Professional Baseball Spirits. It's Japan's version of MLB: The Show, and the difference in quality is crazy. The sound of when a ball hits the mat, the sound when the ball makes contact with the bat,... just everything was leagues ahead of MLB: The Show.

I had to find it on Play Asia to see if they have some in stock, but come to realize,... I forgot that I had the digital version of the PS5 so I can't really get any disc copies...

A Reddit post explained how can you play Japan-only games for your PS5 when you're still in the United States, and the process of creating another account, put the whole thing in Japanese, find a Japanese address (and probably a phone number)...

The process would take a while with the extent of hoping my account doesn't get banned for some reason for the wrong address or something like that. 

As of right now, I would put that as a backburner until I know how to do it rather than risk money and time for it. 

Hopefully, I get the chance to play the game sometime soon. If so, I will be leaving an review for later versions of Vibe Checks.

That's it for this month's version of Vibe Check. I apologize for this version to be really late because we have some exciting new merch that we're going to drop soon. Our hands were completely full, but we're doing our very best!!