Let's dig into 1982! I got games, games, games, and a little bit about music at the end 'cause I was into it then.

Whether you asked for it or not, chances are, Generative AI is now a part of your day-to-day life. Increasingly, it’s been worked into every facet of, well, everything. If you’re like me, it’s become a huge part of your work life too, regardless of whether you asked for it. GenAI is changing our world; it’s deskilling workers, weakening labor power, increasing the surveillance power of institutions, and reducing our collective agency and intelligence.

I decided to go strictly with games released in the 70s next month. This really limits the video game landscape for me, but I made a list, and I'll see what I can do with it. Here's what I got so far. 

Nerds Without Pants is back a wee bit late with some of the biggest news of the year. What a whopper! Can you tell I don’t remember what we talked about? Shh! It’s a secret to everybody.

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.

After ejoying Halo Infinite's open world exploration, I decided that was one of my favorite things in games, and so I dug up an old series to get back into, Just Cause. 

I took a few short breaks from Halo Infinite, but my friend and I keep finding more things to do in it. 

Another year has come and gone. 2022 was a great year for games! I was able to beat 29 games this year. Keep in mind that some of these were old games that were fairly short (such as the original Castlevania and Castlevania III for NES). There were some standout games this year. I'm going to talk about my favorite games that I beat this year (some of which didn't come out this year, but some certainly did). Then I'm going to give 3 awards: Best Game Collection, Best Soundtrack, and of course, my Game of the Year. So let's get on with it. 

My angel faction is so rad! These winged badies can wreck demon butt and perform a mean flying circus to boot. I got them tricked out with platinum wings, diamond mind bullets and radiance shock halos. I'm taking down RAID bosses with ease in this MMO. Thing is, Darla can only play on Wednesdays, Bob on Thursdays, Jeremy on Saturday night and Tamara on Sunday afternoon. It got so tricky getting people together, I played the following three games, watched a tv episode and downloaded two new games instead. 

It's kind of rediculous how many games I sampled here the other day. Some favorites were Minecraft Dungeons, Golden Axe, Beast Busters and Ikari III: The Rescue. Feel free to jump to whatever game interests you. This is a long one. 

1982 was the heart of the golden age of video games, in my opinion. Flynn’s Arcade in the movie Tron, that came out this year, gives a good view of what an 80s arcade was like.

I played several other games today, but I only grabbed a screenshot from Minecraft, so I’m sharing that.

Alright guys, I'm going to try to get down with BaD this year. I have no idea if I'll be successful with it, but here goes nothing.

NIS America recently released a collection of some of SNK’s arcade hits on the Switch.  While SNK is mostly known for their fighting games and NEO GEO, before then they made other arcade games, too, and that’s what this collection is all about.  So no King of Fighters or other NEO GEO games.  Mostly pre-90’s stuff here.  But despite having a lot of army themed shooters, this is still a pretty good collection, so I thought I’d go over the games on it today.

I think I might stop Gamefly rentals and join Game Pass on Xbox One. I want to play games day one and this will let me do it cheaply. Sea of Theives is out and I can jump right in. This will limit what I do on PS4 and 3DS and such, but I probably should narrow my interests anyway. I don't think I'll trade in anything. I still might pick up some games on other systems when there's a sale. So we'll see. I'm kind of excited. I want to get in there with games when everyone else is and get the best multiplayer experiences. I never thought I'd say that, but I'm kind of interested in exploring that right now. So on to today's gaming. 

Wherein I am questioned at length about my involvement in an Oahu crime syndicate by Magnum, a private investigator, during a game of Battlezone at the King Kamehamela Club. 

So here I am on Wednesday night continually grazing on leftovers and a bag of chips that is within arms reach of this laptop. I’ve pushed it away a couple of times but I swear it has feet because it has made its way back to the cozy spot between my headphones on the table and the laptop screen. I have to say the Christmas Eve/Christmas Day festivities were fun. I mean you can’t go wrong with good people, good food, and some fun and games ending with some gifts. Let’s recap the events:

A long session in Minecraft today ended in a lot of frustration and exhaustion. Yes, I did several more achievements, but the effort was more than I wanted. I think I'm done with the game for a while. 

     I’m currently transitioning out of the psychology help and into physical help. No more anti-depressants needed, but now I’m on stuff to heal my back. I hope I can kick that too in a few weeks and get into some core strength exercises. Back issues are the absolute worst thing ever. Also, I got this new free app on my phone (also for pc) called MyFitnessPal, and it’s excellent for watching calories. You just log in your food and exercise, and it measures your calories (and other nutrients) against your goals for weight loss. I’m loving it and it’s really helping. Hopefully I can get to where I want to be within a year. It’s also kind of fun, but onto gaming.

These are the Tech Element characters I have from this game; although, since Mark gave me all his Toys-to-Life figures lately, I still have to check to see if he had some I didn't. 

I loaded up my 3DS with Project STEAM the other day. It plays a whole lot like Valkyria Chronicles, maybe exactly like it. The battle system is the same. It’s turn-based, but you move freely about the field. You can save your action points to use when it’s not your turn. This is called overwatch mode, just like in XCOM, and it lets you automatically shoot at targets that move into your line of sight. The world is steam-punk and you fight an alien menace. I’m liking it.