My game session was interupted by a car repair and now a rain storm keeping me in the library for a while. I don't mind though because the library is my favorite place. So, anyway, I've changed up my gaming plan to simplify it all and started playing a few new and old things.
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.
This was another week in Gen 2, tunes on Xbox, a new process to include current games, and I solved my rewards problem.
These darn brick-breakers, that is. I've been trying to play the earliest gaming styles on Xbox to coincide with my console Gen 1 theme this month. It's been a struggle, and compromises have been made, but it's also been fun, if at times frustrating. Gen 1 might get a miss from me next year if I do this again.
Welcome to the annual Nerds Without Pants music special, which is also the LONGEST EPISODE OF NWP EVER. Sorry (not sorry). Yeah…nothing else to say; but please enjoy some fantastic music!
New Switch game, new console and new retro game buys at Classic Game Junkie where they're having a pre-black friday sale. Here are some pics.
With Super Mario Bros. Wonder being recently released, everyone is talking about the new power-up that turns Mario into an elephant! I didn’t realize Mario was such a University of Alabama fan! He DOES wear red all the time, though! Roll Tide, Mario, Roll Tide! Anyway, Elephant Mario isn’t the ONLY elephant in video games, so I thought I’d talk about my other top video game elephants. So let’s stomp our feet and trumpet our nose! These aren’t in any particular order or anything, though.
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.
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.
Got a late start, so I'm moving fast through what I played this last week.
Welcome to a victorious edition of Nerds Without Pants! JD returns after many, MANY years away to hit the streets for the launch of Street Fighter 6. But before that we brainstorm some video game sequels and spinoffs. Enjoy!
I forgot to mention three other games I've played in the last few weeks, F1 '22, Star Wars Squadrons and Screamride.
I'm a big fan of the Pikmin series. My eyes are always on the lookout for games that use its minon-controlling mechanic like the Overlord games or Hotel Transylvania 3: Monsters Overboard. I even try and shoehorn that mechanic into games like Diablo II. The Necromancer character lets me command groups of skeletons and golems. So when TinyKin appeared on Game Pass one week, I had to play it.
Sometimes Games with Gold sends me adventure games. Somerville and Truberbrook were two recent ones I tried.
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 got totally fed up with Minecraft the other day. Mark and I had just turned the game from Peaceful difficulty (no mobs) to Easy (mobs with moderate damage) in order to hunt Endermen. In less than a couple of minutes my outdoor camping deck with trees for walls was surprise attacked by two creepers, one after the other, in broad daylight, destroying part of my deck and a chest full of stuff. I got so fed up, it led me to erase everything on my hard drive and start anew with random selections from my owned games, Game Pass, EA Play and Games with Gold. All of these groupings have a little button that says, "surprise me". I grabbed one from each section in turn and the resulting chaos is recorded below.
These are the games I played last Tuesday when I was off work. The routine is somewhat different every time I get to play. Like last week I played some Gears of War Judgment in four player co-op. It was fun and I'm going for a hardcore run of the game that way. I didn't get to Gears last Tuesday though. Here's what I got to.
Back during the PSOne days, Square released a mascot kart racing game featuring cute versions of their Final Fantasy staple characters. You know, chocobo, moogle, white and black mages, etc. It was called Chocobo Racing. I wanted to get this game when it came out, but I was poor college student at the time and couldn’t afford to get it at full price. Plus I heard it was getting a lot of bad reviews, so I decided to wait for a while. Shortly after I graduated college, I found a new copy of Chocobo Racing at a flea market and it was only 20 bucks. And since I had a bit more disposable income by then, I decided to get it. And you know what? Despite it having such bad reviews, I really liked it! Sure it was no where near as good as Mario Kart or other mascot racers at the time such as Diddy Kong Racing and Crash Team Racing. But I really liked how they implemented Final Fantasy themes and tropes into the gameplay and presentation. So when Square-Enix showed a sequel of sorts last year coming to the Switch called Chocobo GP, I was really excited and wanted to get it. So now I finally have it and I wanted to talk about it and all the characters and tracks found therein. So let’s get started!
For BaD I thought I'd reveal the shortest games I played recently that I finished and actually enjoyed.