It was the summer of '97 - we were on a family vacation in Montreal and went to La Ronde Amusement Park for the day. I couldn't believe what I was seeing when I was there; a Nintendo Megadome, right inside the park. It was like a dream come true. Even better, it was right before the release of GoldenEye 007, so I got my first look at what would soon become one of my favorite games ever. We played everything we could and left, VHS in hand, promoting some of the upcoming releases, including GoldenEye. There were some other promotional materials too, a dossier that would be thumbed through hundreds of times before we were graced with a copy of the game that Christmas.
Knocked off a bunch more in the 360 collection. I was writing down all the digital only games I wanted to play on 360 and came across a lot of them. I own a lot more than I remember and there are ones I missed as well. This is just adding to my "collection" and making getting through 360 a real chore. I passed my usual burnout on year-long gaming projects a month ago, so I think I'm good for the distance now. Here's this week's plays plus a few buys.
Here's my "waiting for a car repair" blog about the 2011 games that I played relatively close to release date in order of Metacritic rating for that year. Also, I'm just noting the system I played the game on, not all available systems.
It’s been a long time since we’ve seen an entry in the Metroid Prime series - 18 years, in fact. It was 8 years ago that Metroid Prime 4 was originally announced and its development was more than a little turbulent. Initially developed by Bandai Namco, it was later scrapped completely and development was shifted back to Retro Studios to start the project over. In the end, Retro has delivered a solid new entry in the series, but one that doesn’t totally capture what originally made the series so compelling.
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.
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.
Quite a lot has happened gaming wise for me in the last two weeks. I finished up with Twin-Stick and Isometric shooters and discovered several new franchises and another racing game I love. So here goes it.
It's hard to pull myself away from some of these games but that's my plan. Here's what I finalized my month with this week.
Most of my gaming time has been Mad Krammer and I playing the Wizardry remake, but I squeezed in a retro game and the usual Game Pass Rewards game. I also traded some old games I don't like to Game Junkies and picked up some others. Game Junkies is becoming my regular Friday morning haunt of late.
A week ago I was browsing the new releases on Xbox and came across a remake of 1981 RPG Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord. I nearly lost my mind seeing that. My friend Mad Krammer bought it immediately, but at $35, I waited. A week later, after watching him play it, he gifted it to me and now we are both playing it excluding all else.
In addition to Xbox stuff, I ran through a lot of 90s games to see what I wanted to use for trade bait, and what I wanted to keep. Here's what I have something to say about.
It was fun trying out a lot of NES games this month thanks to the NES collection on the Switch subscription service and a few available on collections on Xbox. I also had a few cartriges too for the original experience. Here's what I got to this week plus new stuff.
2021 was just another year of the expected high sellers: COD, Pokemon, Mario, sports games and mobile game billion sellers. 52% of the market went to mobile. Interesting. Here's what interested me and my one pick if I could only pick one.
I briefly touched on a handful of games and then my friend and I got back into Diablo II for a good long time. Finally, I dug into Horizon: Zero Dawn on my PS4.
Wed/Thurs is my weekend right now, so that's when I do most of my gaming. This is what I did this week.
My friend and I started playing this a month or so ago and haven't stopped since. Let's see the evolution of my Necromancer over time as I acquired new gear.
I preordered DQ Treasures from my favorite indy game store (Gamebox Video Games in Topsham, Maine, because they deserve a shoutout) last fall shortly after it was announced. Dragon Quest is probably my favorite JRPG franchise, and Erik was my favorite character in DQ XI, so this was pretty much a no brainer for me. December rolled around and... I realized it wasn't going to be the game I wanted it to be. But that's OK, because I had fun with it anyway. Which is a first for most of the DQ spin-offs for me (with the exception of Rocket Slime, just because I know Cary will say something if I don't put this in, it's his favorite DQ title).
All done with Halo Infinite. I wasn't too thrilled with returning to Ratchet & Clank for some reason, and so I started clicking the "surprise me" button within the sort drop-down menu in my digital library on Xbox. Here was the result.
I'm trying to get more pics into these blogs. I've figured out how to do screenshots on my phone, and in conjunction with Onedrive, I can get these pics over to Pixlbit.
