I've chosen ten games from the Metacritic best of list to start my OG Xbox journey. Here they are.
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.
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.
In Stephen King's memoir In Writing, a good piece of advice (regarding reading habits) that King made was to read in small sips as opposed to big gulps. Which is more accessible depends on the person, their schedule, and how much time they have during a given day.
This is the blog from last week I couldn't get posted until now. I was snowed in on that Sunday the 31st [edit: 25th], but I made it to MK's place Mon-Thurs to play a ton of stuff as work was cancelled those days. Here's the lot.
Around this time, I like to make a list of games I’m looking forward to in the coming year. Of course, this won’t be a complete list, as there will surely be titles announced throughout the year that we don’t know about yet. Especially with the new Switch 2 console being out and all. Heck, this time last year we didn’t even know when the Switch 2 would be coming out! But these are the ones I know about so far that I want to try. So let’s begin!
I got scores/progress on all my owned NES games and began my Genesis stuff. I also played the remaining games on my Xbox Series hard drive and stowed the deck to bring out the Switch next week. Some purchases made also and a return to Star Fleet (known as X-Bomber in Japan).
It’s time for my “Best Video Games of 2025 Awards Show!” Keep in mind that this is my list only and no other outside opinions contributed. And if a game isn’t on this list, it either just didn’t appeal to me as much or I haven’t had a chance to play it yet. Ok with that out of the way, let’s begin!
2025. We are a quarter of the way through the first century of the new millennium and they are still making cool games! Here is a recap of my 2025 in gaming, though few of these games came out in 2025.
It's fun to go down the list of best of all time on Metacritic and make a personal list of favorites. Here are mine for the original Xbox.
So in revisiting this 2000-2009 this month, I thought I'd go down page one of the list of Metacritic's best of for GBA in this time range and make some comments for the games I have something to say about.
I really played through all the 90s games I had ready to go this week before wrapping it all up. Next month will be the 2000s starting with PS2 and GBA.
My girlfriend and I am going on a short vacation to our old college in central New York this weekend. Among other things, I'll be looking to see if that arcade machine, Sky Shark, is still there in the pizza shop I used to go to. The odds aren't good after so much time. But anyway, I played a lot of games this mid-week-end that I have (I'm off wed/thurs regularly) trying to decide what to keep of my 90s game collection.
The site was down when I tried to post last Thursday, so here it is now.
Yes, scouring through the store on Xbox (and other systems) has its rewards. I never know what stealth released title I'll come across. My eyes bugged wide when I saw the following collections.
Went to Retro Con last Saturday with my gaming buddy MadKrammer, bought some stuff, played a few NES games, and finished Farm Together 2.
I know I said I'd be blogging more regularly, but it's been an insanely busy season at the park. We had major construction going on to update some very old infrastructure, and that cut our parking down from 80ish parking spaces to 40ish parking spaces. We're one of the ten busiest state parks in the state now, and I spent most of my time doing traffic control. Yellow safety vest and all. Anyway, back to 80ish parking spaces, a new entrance booth (with electricity!!! Never had that before, lol), and a new bathroom building. Both were desperately needed. And now I have 17 days left of my season, then it's off to work in the local, independent pet supply store down the road, after a well deserved sanity break.
Remember those Tamagotchi virtual pet keychains that were super popular in the late 90s? Well they’ve never really gone away. In fact, back on the Nintendo DS, they had a series of games called Tamagotchi Corner Shop, and there were three of them! You ran little shops and would play touch screen mini-games to serve and help out other Tamagotchi customers. My brother Jeff and I were weirdly obsessed with those games back in the day, probably because we did like those virtual pets (Jeff was even a Tamagotchi for Halloween one year when he was little). Well, Tamagotchi Plaza is the sequel to those games, so of course I had to get it. There are a dozen shops for you to run, and two more if you have the Switch 2 version. I thought it might be fun to run through the shops in this game, so let’s go!
More farming this week in Farm Together 2. Approaching the endgame as regards achievements, but it won't be done quickly. I also picked up two digital games on sale on Xbox, Valiant Hearts: Coming Home and The Bluecoats: North & South.
Summer is winding down, so let’s have one big last bash with game reviews I’ve recently written over at GamerDad.com. Please click on the links and read as many as you can, and maybe post a ‘like’ or comment or two. I’d appreciate it. OK let’s begin!
I'm definitely feeling a farming frenzy coming on: glued to the screen, not moving for hours, barely aware of my surroundings, forgetting to eat. It's on the verge of unhealthy obsession, but I just laugh about it and pull myself away at the end of every "weekend" and get back to work.