The Star Fox series has always been special to me. When I turned 8, shortly after the original game came out, my parents surprised me with it on my birthday. At the time, I remember thinking the 3D graphics were incredible and the game was extremely fun. I was addicted to blasting through space and foiling Andross' plans to dominate the universe. Years on, I remember obsessing over my Nintendo Power issues that showed Star Fox 2 - the new characters and crafts looked amazing. Unfortunately, it wouldn't officially see the light of day until I was an adult, but my Star Fox appetite would soon be satiated with Star Fox 64.

For years Microsoft hoovered up more and more of the games industry. It was shocking when they purchased Bethesda - a huge third party publisher and development house. By the time they secured the deal to buy Activision-Blizzard, it was much less so, and it was clear that Microsoft believed they could buy all the properties they needed to make GamePass a success. It didn't take long to see that their strategy wasn't working.

Yesterday, Sony dropped a few bombs on the gaming world - first, they are discontinuing support of the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita stores by next year, at the latest, with support ending immediately in some areas. Second, they will cease production of physical games by January 2028 for all releases on PlayStation consoles, leaving only another year and half before you'll no longer be able to grab the latest games pressed to a disc.

But here they are. All the stuff I played last week while my car was laid up with repairs. 

Going down the top ranked on Metacritic for that year, these are what I played a lot within console generation 7, 

I'm getting closer to the end of my 360 games now, but it may be a few more weeks still before I move on to PS3 or Wii. I really can't wait to start those. 

I ripped through a lot of stuff this week, being impatient to get through it all, the slightest annoyance sending me to the next game in my collection. But, I had a lot of good experiences anyway. I'll break these 360 games into two categories, physical and digital only (or, Xbox Live Arcade as it used to be called). 

Games Beaten

I got through a lot combining the end of last week's and all of this week's gaming. I'm clearly not going for complete runs. I just play to revisit and go as far as I stay interested. Here's the lot on Xbox 360:

Just a few but with some interesting death throes in most of them. 

I'm on vacation this week for the most part. LJ and I went to Washington D.C. to visit the Smithsonian Zoo and Museum of the American Indian (also, accidently - 'cause we parked beneath it - the Bible Museum and saw the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit), but I manged to squeeze in some gaming on a few days here and there and last week, which I couldn't report on 'cause Pixlbit was down. 

In conjunction with Metacritic. I'm numbering all my games with the Metacritic rank to give me a play order as I go through my collection. Its just my lately metagame. Here's my 1-10 with the Metacritic rank in parenthases. 

First, some new stuff, then the old stuff. Eight more down and less than a dozen left. I'm chomping at the bit to start into my DS collection. 

Fourteen this time! I'm cruisin'. 

I might have gotten confused, frustrated and dead in many of them, but I enjoyed them all. Who says you got to finish stuff? It's the journey not the destination, I say. 

This is my list in coordination with the all-time best OG Xbox games on Metacritic. I'm playing games in order of MC rating instead of release date this year. 

I've chosen ten games from the Metacritic best of list to start my OG Xbox journey. Here they are. 

Yes, I can't believe it, but I have finished going through all my physical NGC and GBA games this week. I spent the most time with Shining Force: Resurrection of the Dark Dragon and Riviera: The Promised Land. Let's go!

I'm happy to report that the PixlBit 3.0 implementation has been smoothly sailing along. I've been working on it nearly every night that I can muster the energy to do so. The progress has been very satisfying to see and I wanted to take a moment to share some more screenshots and give some details on what's done and what's yet to be implemented. If you're impatient and just want to see a big gallery of screenshots, you'll want to check here.

It's time to run down the list of GameCube games on Metacritic. It's fun and brings up memories and helps me decide what stays in my collection and what I need to pick up. Here goes. 

I put away the modern consoles to focus on my retro journey. So all I have up is the GameCube and its Game Boy Player. I put the most time into Metroid Prime, Pikmin, Advance Wars 2, Metroid Zero Mission and Fire Emblem Sacred Stones, but here's everything I played.  

I got through the last of my PS2 games, or so I thought. Here's what I got to this week. 

Hey guys, I know PixlBit 3.0 has been something I've talked about for a very long time. It's been something I've made plans for, thought about for countless hours, but never could find the time or energy to really tackle the project. But lately, that's changed - I jumped in full force and I've been making some great progress. To help keep me accountable I figured it'd be great to share some screenshots with you guys and answer questions on stuff you may be curious about.

After a brief time with Monster Hunter Stories, I really managed to focus this week on my PS2 stuff and get through a lot. Then I traded a bunch of them, but also picked up some new ones. 

It's always fun to go down the list of Metacritic's top games for a system or year. Here goes for the GBA, which I'm trying to play alongside my PS2 games. It's all about the early 2000s.