Oh the platformers. I must've uttered every raw, adult, four-letter, explosive, pun-ridden, nasty word or phrase ever invented by sailors from a dozen different nations. After a dozen or so games -- each rage quit with a unique expletive -- to my surprise, I found myself settling in a bit,. I got several levels farther in games I never got out of the first level with before and eventually even started enjoying myself. . . Wait, maybe that's getting ahead of myself. Let's just say I started calming down. So here's the lot of them that I tried -- and largely failed with -- this week. 

My car's in the shop and so there will be a delay -- hence the blog. Onward.

I got to 35 hack 'n' slash games in March. The early ones go quick and some later ones just stopped me dead at some point with confusing mission objectives, difficult mechanics or some other dumb thing I couldn't stand. I have been trying to stick to each game as long as I can, pushing beyond my limits. I'll try even harder next month. There's nothing like actually finishing a game. I think I finished exactly 6 of these - all mentioned below.

I've been away far too long. Where'd everybody go? Now that I'm in a better headspace, I'm hoping to be back to blogging regularly. Maybe we can lure some of the others back. Anyway...

I can't resist. My April is going to be themed around Console Generation 4, which is Genesis, SNES and Game Boy (just to name the most popular systems). I want to explore platformers, but ones that have more than just straight 2D jumping/running challenges. I like exploration and a lot of action and so the "action-platformer" genre seems right for me. But, I'm also choosing platform games that I've always been interested in trying. Here's the list I have so far. 

In this post, I play some of the hack 'n' slash games after the Genesis/SNES era. 

I found a few more NES era games in the hack 'n' slash genre and I'll retell what I've played so far in the Genesis/SNES era. 

There are a lot, so I may save some to mention later. The earliest of the games either didn't grab me, which means I only played them for 15 minutes or so, or they did, in which case I beat them in about an hour. I found some more of them than I mentioned before by cruising through collections too. I'm being pretty arbitrary strict in my choices: it has to say "hack 'n' slash" in the game's description or as part of the genre on wikipedia. So here's what I played (most of it) this week. 

So for March I have console Generation 3 as the time period (NES, SMS, Arcades, Atari 8bit, C64, Amiga, Apple II and such - you know, second half of the 80s). To limit the choices, I thought about what genres were interesting at that time to me and Beat 'em Ups came up first but more specifically Hack 'n' Slash games are really my more focused favorite. Also a limit of 20 games, although, I did make a much bigger list in case I run out. Let's get into it. 

I feel like I may run out of twin-stick shooters (and those closely related isometric shooters) soon and so I made a list of "blobbers" (games with a party of characters that move together) to check out. It fits my theme because it started in 1981 with Wizardry. Here's the list. 

Yeah, not doing any more 70s games but I will just mention Space Invaders Extreme 2 as being awesome before moving onto my theme for this month, twin-stick shooters. 

2024 has come and gone. There were ups and downs (my gosh, it could be downright brutal at times) but I got to play cool games and that's what really matters, right?

i played a bunch of stuff from my month's theme (70s). When I run out of stuff on a particular day, I default to Lego Star Wars. 

Once a month, I do the rounds at the four indie game stores in my area and see what I can find. Part 1 of this happened a week ago and included two stores (Classic Game Junkies and Game 'n' DVD Exchange). Today was Part 2 and two other stores a little farther away (Just Press Play and Complete in Box). Here's what I got this week:

Earlier this year, Capcom released a collection of their Marvel licensed arcade games.  It was pretty surprising that they did this, seeing how Marvel is owned by Disney now and all.  But they made it happen!  I got the physical release of this recently, so I thought I’d ‘take you for a ride’ and check out all the games on this collection.

How to play what I want to play and get it done. I often end up with these gigantic lists that are impossible to get through. I also end up buying games that just end up in the backloggery. So how to solve this? I think I have an answer. 

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:

I've come up with a 2025 plan for my gaming. The goal is to put the entire history of video games into 12 parts so I can travel in time over the course of the year (I do this for music and literature as well). Here's what I came up with. 

Just in time for Halloween, this batch of game reviews I’ve written recently at GamerDad.com features all sorts of spooky stuff, like witches and bats and alien bugs!  Well OK, it’s really not that spooky, this IS me we’re talking about here.  But please click on the links and read as many as you can anyway and maybe post a ‘like’ or comment or two.  I’d appreciate it.  OK let’s begin!

I’ve grilled up a batch of game reviews I’ve recently written at GamerDad.com!  As always, please click on the links and read as many as you can and maybe post a ‘like’ or comment or two.  I’d really appreciate it.  OK, let’s dig in!

I'm waiting for my car's oil change as I write this in the middle of my usual days off. It's killing half my gaming day, darn it, but it can't be helped. Here's what I've played so far this week. 

Diablo IV threatens to take over every minute of my gaming, but I managed to squeeze in some retro and get my GP rewards points done. 

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. 

Retro first, then new stuff. That's how I do it now whenever I'm in front of my gaming set up at Mad Krammer's place. I'm on Gen 4 now and Genesis, SNES and Game Boy. Here's what I got to this week: