This is a fun feature that shows how your average rank compares to others in the same geographical area. Unfortunately, my area appears to be the toughest of them all. At the moment, the USA Mid-Atlantic region 10th place average rank is about 65. Considering my average rank is around 2700 or so, it looks like I'll never make it onto this list. (I'm currently 46th in the region.)

Thanks to the 1.5x speed mod, I've just gotten my most difficult FC yet -- Palindrome at 8/12 or 4/6. With a breakdown of 410/24/3/0/22 it's not exactly top-notch, but it's now the hardest song I've managed to get an FC on, which is definitely something. The speed mods don't always help me get new personal bests, but sometimes they do by giving me good results like this.

I've heard that these have been out for a while now, but I only started playing with them recently. On some of the hardest songs I tried, my worst ranked ones, using 1.5x helped a lot. By spacing out the arrows more, it was a bit easier to read the notes. It helped me hit more arrows, get better combos, and miss fewer arrows. Not always, because the songs are still very difficult, but this does seem to be a useful addition to the game. I'll have to keep playing around with it.

Starting to come back from my time away, I realized that I've been a member of this site for just over 3 years now. It doesn't seem that long, but maybe that's because of the long break I had between when my old computer couldn't play FFR very well anymore and getting a new one that could. Happy third anniversary to me? :)

I haven't been around here very much lately because I've been busy playing some other games elsewhere. It's for a special event though, so once it's over, I'll be back here more frequently. I have to work on restoring my falling overall rank. Yes, I know it means almost nothing, but it's nice to have my name in the list, and higher would be nicer.