I just got two of my favorite TV shows of the 2000s from Amazon, Venture Bros. and The Mighty Boosh, that I wanted to watch but now there's no time for them. Instead, my regular goto without a tv show to watch during meals at game time, is Fail Army on youtube. Why this is endlessly entertaining, I'm not sure. The psychology of it elludes me. But it is constant source of hilarity even topping other distractions like sports highlights, hobbyist vids, and miscellaneous trivia. It's like the sauce on the sandwich of gaming. Details below. 

There’s a fishing game in Japan by Namco called Ace Angler, and you view the screen horizontally to the ground like you’re looking into a fishing pond.  It’s pretty popular, and I think I even played it once at Round 1 arcade here in the US, or at least an imitation of it.  And now you can play a home version of the arcade game on the Switch with Ace Angler: Fishing Spirits.  It was available digitally in the US last year, but I imported a physical copy of it because I’m a freak about stuff like that.  But the game is entirely in English so there’s no language barrier here.  I asked for it for Christmas, but since imports can sometimes take a while, I actually didn’t get it until around Easter this past year.  And I finally got around to playing it recently.  The cool thing about the Switch game is that they made the arcade game like it has its own amusement park and aquarium.  So it’s like a cross between a Namco Museum game (albeit for only one arcade game) and Animal Crossing.  You even create your own avatar that looks like something out of Animal Crossing, and since I like the aquariums in those games, as well as Namco Museums in general, this game really ticked off a lot of boxes for me!  The game says it’s Ace Angler’s 10^th anniversary, which I didn’t realize it had been around that long!  But anyway, let me take you on a tour guide through the Ace Angler Aquarium and Arcade Amusement Park found in the Switch Fishing Spirits game!

Specifically the Irkens from Irk, and more specficially, Invader Zim, voiced by Richard Horvitz (Chaos in Skylanders). This 2001 animated TV series didn't even make it through its second season, but its still pretty good. It especially appeals to me for its angular design, wild humor, surrealism, and sometimes dark tones. Zim is assigned to take over Earth and he assumes the disguise of a middle schooler to hide his secret. Dib, a fellow student, is not convinced and seeks to expose him. Another selling point for me was the voice of Kevin McDonald from Kids in the Hall as one of the Almighty Tallest, co-leader of the Irks and Zim's boss. Oh, and there were more aliens in the games I played this week. 

There are so many games on the SEGA Genesis Mini 2 that I had to split this blog into two parts.  So make sure to catch last week’s installment if you missed it.  Anyway, here we’ll go over the rest of the Genesis games as well as the unreleased stuff and SEGA CD titles.  OK let’s begin!

I funny thing happened on the way to my Switch. A friend I hadn't talked to in years texted me and started a conversation about Animal Crossing. Turns out he'd been playing it during the pandemic. We friended up, I visited his island, and he mine. The whole experience was really cool.

Last year there was a game that came out that I really wanted to review called Arcade Paradise.  I requested a review code three different times and was denied each time!  I really wanted to review it, too, because it’s a time management sim where you must run a laundromat business, but you are secretly running an arcade in the back with dozens of fictional arcade games you can actually play!  I actually had an idea for a business that was half laundromat, half arcade, and I was going to called it Quarters: Good Clean Fun.  So this game really resonated with me.  If I had gotten a chance to review it last year, it definitely would’ve showed up on my Game of the Year list somewhere.  But this year I used some Christmas present PlayStation Store points to buy it, and sure it was only 20 bucks so I was kind of cheap, but this stuff adds up if you’re not careful.  Anyway, so now that I’ve played the game, I thought I’d write a blog about the arcade cabinets you can play on it.  Oh yeah, and slight spoiler alerts here and there, but I don’t think it matters much.

Way back in 2019 when I went to PAX West in Seattle, I saw a new handheld console called the PlayDate.  It was simple, yellow, and had a black and white screen.  And a crank you turned on the side!  And it was just as charming as heck and I wanted one for some reason!  Well I finally got one, so let’s take a look at it!

For years, there has been a heated debate among fans of the Mega Man series regarding which one is the best of the original hexalogy. After the facts have been laid out and philosophical life lessons thoroughly dissected, the debate usually boils down to Mega Man 2 vs. Mega Man 3. Which is the greater of the two? Well, no matter which side you’re on, we can all agree on the thing- the cover art for Mega Man 3 finally got it right! No more awkward stances or that pistol-for-an-arm-cannon nonsense. Of course, he didn’t look as good as on the Famicom cover, but that’s another argument.

I broke 200k in achievements on Xbox the other day. The top scorers worldwide are over 3 million. The top gamer on my friend's list has around 400k. My score reflects 15 years of playing on Xboxes. But enough of that, on with what I played this week so far. 

Just a day and half of gameplay this week 'cause work, like, gotta work when they tell me to. But, I still got to a lot of stuff even though I'm trying to get more focused. To do that I looked up the top Xbox Series X games on Metacritic. Elden Ring was first with Hades second. I'm waiting for a sale for Elden Ring, so I downloaded Hades, which is on Game Pass, and I've played it before and liked it. I'll try and go deep with it this time. 

How can I maximize my plays, I ask myself? Why by limiting myself to a single achievement per game. When an achievement unlocks, it's off to the next game. I'm currently third on the leaderboard of my Xbox friends. I'm right behind number 2 but far behind the leader, PhantasyStar77, who has clearly been achievement hunting from the begining of the month. I'm not so much hunting for them as using them as a goal marker, or playtime limiter. Anyway, here are my plays so far this week:

Here are some screen shots of the last three games I played. Following this, I'll run through how I changed up my list of games on my Xbox hard drive. 

Games Beaten

Well we’ve reached the finish line of another BaD!  Sorry I couldn’t participate, but writing three game reviews a week plus all my other life commitments is enough for me!  But I sure enjoyed reading all your other blogs and I hope you all will continue to post blogs more frequently in the future!  So to celebrate the end of another good BaD, here are game reviews I’ve recently written 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!

Happy Valentine’s Day!  I’ve got valentines for all of you!  Game reviews I’ve written recently at GamerDad.com!  Show your love by reading as many as you can, and maybe post a ‘like’ or comment or two.  I’d appreciate it!  OK let’s begin!

Another year of gaming comes to an end. I guess it was kind of a sleepy year for games if you like big tentpole titles, but I honestly found plenty to play. Almost all of my gaming was done on Switch, which is set to pass both the Wii and PS1 in total install base by the end of the year. I didn't really bother pursuing the PS5 or the XSX|S this year, as there isn't a lot on those systems to justify a purchase.

Witnessing the leap from the NES to the new 16-bit Super Nintendo in 1991 was downright magical. The console had an eye-catching futuristic design (in the eyes of my six-year-old self anyway), and the hardware produced higher-quality graphics and sound that delivered an experience impossible for the previous generation. And what better title to lead the charge than Super Mario World? I remember seeing the game for the first time at a graduation party for a friend going to middle school. We all huddled around her TV, taking turns playing the game. As soon as that giant Banzai Bill streaked across the screen, I was hooked.

Let's see what recent games I played on Xbox One from the Xbox phone app, cause gosh knows, I can't remember. 

Today the flooding shut down work so I played. I caught up with my general and Game Pass rewards quests, bought a new game, and dove back into Minecraft for a bit. 

When I was a kid in the pre-NES days, vertical shooters were a large part of my gaming diet, as they were a huge part of the gaming landscape. Since my family had home computers, I played clones more than I did the arcade originals or their official home versions on consoles like the 2600. These games generally fell into one of three major categories: Space Invaders clones, Galaxian clones, and Centipede clones. In this blog I will talk about the games that spawned the third type of shooter - Centipede and Millipede.

My gaming routine is as follows: play any game needed for MS Rewards; play any game needed for Game Pass rewards; go through all the games on my hard drive from smallest file size to largest. For this last objective, I play a game for the next closest achievement, decide if I want to keep it or not, and then move on to the next game. I repeat the process weekly until, hopefully, I clear my hard drive (not likely when I keep adding new games). So here is what I did the other day. 

I've been watching a bunch of Looney Toons lately but I only want to watch the ones made in the 50s. I've learned to read the roman numerals in the copyright date at the beginning of each short film. I have often misremembered the titles to some of my favorite shorts. i thought one was Nightmare Hare but it's actually called Water Water Every Hare. Another is Duck Dodgers in the 24th 1/2 Century but the one I really like is one with Bugs, Daffy and Marvin but I haven't nailed town the title yet. Anyway, gaming. Here's what a played that day. 

Gamed until I felt like I just wanted to quit and go home. I did eventually find a comfortable game to sink my time into.