I've been without a car this week which has made it hard to get to MK's for gaming, but I managed it one day by bus. Here are the results.
I was fortunate enough to get an invite to the Network Test for The Duskbloods on the Switch 2 this past weekend. I was able to embark into the land of dusk over the course of all three days it ran and I walked away excited about what FromSoftware is cooking up here. Like every FromSoftware game, it feels built on the back of the last game, and the influence of Elden Ring: Nightreign is clearly apparent. But interestingly, it also evokes Bloodborne in equal measure, while offering something that feels familiar, but unique.
One of my favorite things about the original Splatoon was that while you were waiting for an online match to start, you could play a little 8-bit arcade style game. I even wrote an article about them here. I missed having them in the sequels, but I can understand why they took them out. I think most people would rather play in a practice arena doing what they’ll actually do in the match while they wait, and I think some of the extra arcade games were locked behind amiibo figures anyway. But I still liked them because I’m weird I guess. So I was pleasantly surprised that the arcade games made a return in Splatoon Raiders! I don’t even remember anyone talking about them in previews or reviews, so it was a surprise to me! So I’m going to talk about them here!
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.
It's fun to go down the Metacritic [MC] list, so I'm doing it again for the stuff I played in 2010.
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.
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.
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!
Seems like a lot of stuff I played this week but between retro games with low gameplay time and various rage-quits it's not as much time spent as it seems. Here's everything, 'cause I need to write.
This would be January 2025 when I will be focusing on the first generation of consoles and games from the 70s in general, plus some digging into even older stuff if I run out of games to play. It will be the beginning of the year and the beginning of games, video or otherwise. Here's the first list I wrote up:
It was all Switch this week. I feel like i'm cramming in playing the systems I largely ignored during the year in this last month. Better late than never.
I’ve been a big fan of the Super Monkey Ball games ever since the GameCube ones and the original arcade game (which was called just Monkey Ball and the joystick was a banana you had to hold…kind of embarrassing). The series is still going strong today and SEGA recently released Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble on Switch. So I though I’d do a little review of it and go over the mini-games and even talk about what’s in the “Legendary Banana Edition” you can get at launch. So let’s roll!
Ok so apparently I forgot to either upload my last blog post or I completely forgot to write one. I checked my folder and it turns out the one that I was typing up last week I either never saved or it got lost before I had a chance to upload it (I probably just forgot) anyways let’s catch up.
Welcome back to Nerds Without Pants! Julian has a big announcement this week: the beginning of a project to upload and archive the entirety of NWP’s 11 year history on our channel! Then we talk about a ton of games before getting into some light headlines.
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 10th 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!
Playstation won the console wars. Super Mario 64 won at home worldwide. Firaxis, Valve and IGN were all founded this year. Coolness! That year I and my friend Mad Krammer were playing mostly FPS games ported from PC to PS, N64 and Saturn. Over the years, though, I've discovered quite a few others.
Most of my gaming's been done this week. I write this waiting for an oil change before continuing one more day. With time to kill, I thought I'd write down what I've played so far.
Around this time of year, I like to make a list of my best games SO FAR, because usually the AAA titles are released later in the year during the holiday season, and the titles that came out earlier tend to be forgotten. So here’s when those games get their due. 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!
Only three games this week as I played EDF 2025 to the point of exhaustion, but I'm done with that for now.
Welcome to a jam-packed Headlines edition of Nerds Without Pants! It’s time to kick off “The-Artist-Formerly-Known-as-E3” season, starting with Sony’s big PlayStation Showcase! It sure was…something. Something that we’ll talk about. Please be excited for it. PLEASE.
Sneaking in like a ninja, here are some game reviews I’ve recently written at GamerDad.com! Please click on the links and read as many as you can, and maybe even post a ‘like’ or comment or two. I’d appreciate it. OK let’s begin!
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.
A lot went on while I was blogging daily in February. I thought I'd let y'all in on every game-related thing, but it'll take a few blogs to do it. I'll start with Serious Sam.