Following yesterday’s remembrances of the Nintendo 3DS, I decided to open up the records app and take a good, long look at all of the games I played on the system throughout its lifetime. I definitely could transcribe the entire list of 254 games, but I settled on just listing any game or app that I used for over ten hours. That’s still 74 different pieces of software!
Continue reading Nintendo 3DS by the HoursCategory: Retro Gaming
Banjo-Revelationie
I’ve played Banjo-Kazooie, I don’t know, four or five times since it released in 1998. Or at least, I’ve played it that many times to completion. If you count all the times I played through Spiral Mountain on the demo kiosk at Toys ‘R’ Us, the number would quickly become astronomical.
Anyway, Banjo-Kazooie is a pretty open-ended game. Much like Super Mario 64, there is an intended order that you’re supposed to visit the game’s different worlds, but as long as you’ve got enough macguffins to unlock the right doors, you can play the worlds in whatever order you like. Unlike its sequel, Banjo-Tooie, Banjo-Kazooie’s world are pretty well self-contained. Rare is the instance when you have to leave a world because there’s a challenge that you cannot complete without a move learned in a later world.
Continue reading Banjo-RevelationieNintendo Direct 2.9.2022
It feels like forever since we’ve seen a big Nintendo commercial like this. Maybe only since December? But I don’t think I did a “liveblog” of the last one, so… as good as forever ago.
Show’s starting! Let’s-a go!
Continue reading Nintendo Direct 2.9.20222021 Reflections: Part 4: The Runners-up.
“But Ryan!” you shout, incredulously “Where was Part 3??”
I’ll tell you where Part 3 is. It’s here. I just didn’t add it to the post title, because I didn’t want to. There you go. There’s no lost chapter or anything. Just me being silly and inconsistent.
Anyway, just for kicks, here is the list of video games that I had considered for my 2021 Top 10 list, but didn’t quite make the cut. I think that these are all great games, but they just didn’t affect me the same way that the winners did. I would absolutely recommend any game from this list.
- Downfall (PC)
- Ys Origin (Switch)
- Ys I: Ancient Ys Vanished ~ Omen (PC)
- Ys II: Ancient Ys Vanished ~ The Final Chapter (PC)
- Power Wash Simulator (PC)
- Deltarune: Chapter II (PC)
- Alisa (PC)
- Kathy Rain: The Director’s Cut (PC)
Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up: January 2022
~ Game Over ~
Kathy Rain: the Director’s Cut (PC) – Probably my favourite point-and-click adventure game of all time, and there’s some tough competition! Features a good story, great characters, very good voice acting, and a complete lack of nonsense puzzle solutions. I think it says a lot that I had watched an LP of this one, yet still felt it necessary to play it myself.
Mega Man X (SNES) – Tradition demands it!
Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana (PS4) – This is a Very Good Action RPG. It builds on the foundation laid by SEVEN and Memories of Celceta, and really did a great job of refining what made those games good. It also adds a number of quality-of-life features, a player-controlled camera, and a fishing mini-game! My only major beef is that the broken equipment that powers up for every so many monsters you kill was nerfed in this one.
Pokémon Shining Pearl (Switch) – Pokédex completed.
~ Progress Notes ~
Cyberpunk 2077 (PC) – *shrug emoticon*
Pokémon Legends: Arceus (Switch) – Unlocked third area.
TE’s Top 10 Video Games of 2021
You know what this is. Rules are as such:
I had to play a game for the first time in 2021 for it to be a nominee.
That is all. The games are listed in the order that I played them. Let us commence!
Continue reading TE’s Top 10 Video Games of 20212021 Reflections: Part 2: On the Topic of Zeldas
Well, my friends, I’ve done it. Throughout the course of 2021, I played every “core” Legend of Zelda video game (and one spin-off). It was a fun “project”, and I finally played/finished the few titles that I’d never gotten around to before.
What everyone is dying to know, I’m sure, is where Breath of the Wild is going to fit on my ranking list. And I’m finding it incredibly difficult to place it! Honestly, BotW is such a radical departure from the typical Zelda formula that it feels like comparing a papaya to oranges. So I think that finding a place for it will require me to stop and really consider why I’ve placed each game as I have.
Continue reading 2021 Reflections: Part 2: On the Topic of ZeldasMonthend Video Game Wrap-Up: December 2021
~ Game Over ~
Ys Seven (PC) – I wrote about how I was struggling a bit near the halfway point, but the difficulty of Nightmare mode kind of cleared up after that. At least until the final bosses, which required a heck of a lot of grinding to beat. Still a very good game, just not one you should play on the hardest difficulty setting.
The Room (PC) – Having no relation to the infamous movie of the same name, this is a game about solving a series of puzzle boxes. It was a lot of fun, though the puzzles were maybe a little bit on the easy side. Took less than two hours to complete all five chapters, and I look forward to playing the sequels.
Continue reading Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up: December 202124 Days of Desire (23): Resident Evil VR
It seems like there was a very long time where VR was just something I’d never be able to have for myself. It needs a huge room, an expensive headset, an even more expensive computer… There were just so many barriers to entry that I just ignored VR as a thing that existed.
Then Facebook started bombarding me with Oculus Quest 2 ads, and at some point I decided to see what it was all about. Now here we are a year later, and I’m enjoying a… fairly limited library of VR games. There just aren’t all that many games available for Quest 2. But that actually doesn’t matter, because it has the best game of them all: Resident Evil 4.
Continue reading 24 Days of Desire (23): Resident Evil VR24 Days of Desire (16): An Arcade
This one’s quick and easy: I want an arcade.
Well, that is to say, a very specific arcade. An arcade that has the “holy trinity” of 90’s brawlers: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Captain America and the Avengers, and The Simpsons. Though honestly, I’d gladly accept even one of the three.
Growing up, our Chuck E Cheese restaurant had those three cabinets, all nicely aligned back-to-back-to-back, and they were where I spent the vast majority of my tokens. Those and Cruis’n USA, but I’m less nostalgic about that one. While we do have a few modern establishments that include arcade games as part of their schtick, none of them have any of the three I listed. It’s all skee-balls and coin pushers ’round these parts.
So that’s really it. My list of demands is short. Not cheap, mind you, but short. I feel like I’m putting out a reasonable ask, but I think the fact is that those arcade cabinets have left the city and are never coming back. I did see (and play!) TMNT once, but it was at a bar that has long since been replaced by a spa or something that I care equally little about.