Last week, I wrote a couple of blog posts that were spurred on by the news that Nintendo will be closing up the 3DS eShop. What I hadn’t mentioned was that the Wii U’s eShop is closing as well. It’s… less of a big deal. I think that I bought every game I wanted on Wii U while it was still Nintendo’s active platform. It’s not like there were a whole lot of them.
What I’m getting to here, is that there was also a statistics thingy for Wii U games on Nintendo’s website. Look at mine!
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 HoursFor each year that passes, I become more and baffled that this website still exists. Like, I have immense difficulty focusing on anything for more than about 10 minutes at a time, and a list of unfinished projects that could wrap around the Earth. How am I still doing this???
I don’t have an answer to that question. But Nintendo recently asked themselves a similar question, in relation to keeping the ol’ 3DS family of systems relevant. Their response was “We’re not.” and earlier this week, it was announced that the 3DS eShop will be shutting down in March of next year. To be more specific, you’ll no longer be able to make purchases at that point. Presumably, the shop will still exist so that people can still download all the games they’ve paid for. Presumably.
Continue reading Sunset of the Dual ScreenYou 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 2021I like that Nintendo sends out little summaries of your gaming statistics at the end of each year now. Well, I don’t like seeing the actual figure of hours I’ve wasted on video games, but I’m a big fan of data! Unfortunately, their 2021 website is a little less printscreen-friendly than it was in 2020, so you only get to see the highlights:
Keeping in mind that this is only effective as of December 14, so we can probably add another 10 hours of Breath of the Wild on there (nice).
Otherwise… shocking revelations! 48 hours of Fitness Boxing 2 is fine, but it should have been double that, in my opinion. I’ve really been slacking off as far as exercise goes, but it’s just so hard to care, you know? 47 hours in Monster Hunter Rise is nigh unbelievable to me. I typically log between 200-300 hours in any given MH game, and for my money, Rise is the most fun game in the series to date. So what gives? Probably too much Zelda.
The January spike would have been due mostly to Picross S4. March was when Monster Hunter hit, but I also spent what felt like forever playing Pixel Puzzle Makeout League. April was all about Ys Origin and Picross S5. August saw high numbers thanks to the plodding The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. I spent a lot of time in October playing all of the games in the Castlevania Anniversary Collection, and it’s safe to say that November and December were split between Breath of the Wild and Pokémon Shining Pearl.
How many of those would I have remembered if not for my handy-dandy month end posts? Fewer than you might think!
Ys: The Oath in Felghana (PC) – The remake of Ys III, which is the game that made me want to learn more about the Ys series, after having randomly watched a speedrun. Wildly different from the original, but also very similar to Ys Origin, a game that I liked so much that I played it three times in a row. Felghana was… also very good in general, though it was a heck of a lot more grindy than I would have preferred.
Crooked Silence (PC) – A PS1-looking, horror-themed FPS that I purchased on Itch.io for seventy-five cents. It’s shockingly good, at least for that price. Needs some polish, but I had a good time with it. Plus it came with three extra DLC mini-games that were all fairly unique and fun as well. I’d recommend this one.
Picross S5 (Switch) – Completed all modes. So much picross!
Continue reading Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up: June 2021Ys I: Ancient Ys Vanished ~ Omen (PC) – Words, words, words.
Resident Evil Village (PS5) – Beat this one three times. And also played a lot of The Mercenaries. Because it’s super good. I’ll probably write down lots of words about it in the near future. Or maybe not, who knows?
Inunaki Tunnel (PC) – Video here.
Continue reading Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up: May 2021Super Mario 3D Land (3DS) – I did all the Special worlds. As if that’s a surprise. But I’m not playing the entire game again as Luigi. Probably.
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD (WiiU) – You know what’s weird? Nintendo put a lot of work into refining Wind Waker for this remake, but they didn’t add in any of the dungeons that were apparently cut to get the original game out the door faster. I wonder why. Were said dungeons completely incomplete? Were they maybe just not very good? I guess us regular folk will never really know.
Hitman (2016) (Stadia) – Very cool game that does a lot to make stealth-based gameplay fun. Janky in a lot of ways, but never so much that it ruins the experience. Also, holy cow are there a lot of things to do. The extra missions and challenges really at a ton of value to a game that would be very short if you were to just mainline the story.
Continue reading Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up: April 2021I’ve yet to really write anything about Monster Hunter Rise, and that’s mostly because I’ve been keeping myself so busy playing Monster Hunter Rise. But there’s one thing about the newest entry in the MH series that I feel like I absolutely need to do a little spiel about.
An important part of every Monster Hunter game is eating before you go on a quest. You select a few ingredients, and a meal is whipped up that provides an increase to your stats and maybe some special buffs. Typically the meal is a cartoonishly huge plate of meat, fish, and veggies. MH Rise, being very strongly ninja-themed, replaces that “normal” meal with dango: a traditional Japanese rice snack.
While I’m sure I’ve seen dango somewhere else during the course my life (probably a different video game), I’ve never really known what it was called or what it was made of until MH Rise came along and made a huge deal out of it. Learning more about the snack from the game, and partially being persuaded by how every character is obsessed with the stuff, I felt like it was something that I had to try for myself.
Of course, I don’t live in Japan, so… I think you see where this is going.
Yes, that’s right. I made my own dango. And while they look just about perfect in the image above, rest assured that this was my third batch, and the first two didn’t come out anywhere near as well.
Continue reading Cultural AppropriationControl (PS4) – 100% trophies for main game and DLC expansions. Super great game. Strongly recommend, would play again. Probably should continue playing, because there are still incomplete missions…
The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D (3DS) – I was enjoying the original so much that I decided to revisit the remake that I’d never finished. Good call, me! MM3D is an incredible remake and I want so badly for a Switch port to free it from the teeny-tiny confines of 3DS Jail. I even went for the 100% clear, which I never do for MM. Too many mini-games; it’s really my only major complaint with this one.
Continue reading Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up: March 2021