EPISODE 61.5

This video was supposed to be finished aaaages ago, but... well, y'know, December happened.

So the end of the series is looming ever and ever closer! I had every intention of being completely done by the end of the year so I could concentrate on my new blog in 2014, but... (sigh) Looks like I'll be running two blogs concurrently. >_<

Only 2 or 3 more videos left now. Hope you had a wonderful Christmas, whether it's boiling hot like it is here, or if you're snowed in the freezing cold. Happy new year and I suppose I'll see you in 2014!

OHMEHGERD!

So who's got this yet?

I was very nervous about a direct sequel to one of my all-time favourite games (see Episode 19) but it's stunningly good. Best use of 3D I've seen on the system, pity help the poor sods who just shelled out for a 2DS...

Sure, it kinda feels like an expansion pak (as does Batman Arkham Origins, another game I'm playing through at the moment) but gee, it's sucked me right in as only a Zelda game can. So, so good.

A-hem... Where were we? Retro gaming? Yes. That's right. I've just finished redesigning "The List" page (thanks Eric Marguns for the reminder) to make it a bit neater and include all of the "catch-up" games I've been doing.

Clever clogs who have a look at the list will be able to see a couple of little nuggets I've slipped in there as well. They might notice that I've already written in the next 2 games to feature in the upcoming video (probably a week or two away, I'd say) as well as empty placeholders for the remaining games after that. What will they be...? Can you guess...? ;-)

The new consoles are out... Hooray... (sarcasm) Personally I couldn't care less. All the games are bleugh. I've got more than enough gaming with Zelda this week, Mario 3D World next week, as well as the thousand other games I'm currently playing.

Happy gaming all!

EPISODE 55.5

I told you it wouldn't be a long wait this time! ;-)

It's nice to play games that are

a) Enjoyable, and

b) Short.

Any memories of these games to share?

See you next time, ladies and gents! :-)

EPISODE 46.5

This video has been far too long coming, and I apologise. You can blame my indifference to Robotrek. But it's all done, and here it is...

I can always be sure that if I'm making a video about a Mega Man game it's going to turn out pretty epic. And this is absolutely, finally, the LAST TIME I play a Mega Man game as part of the Year (ha!) of Retro Gaming.

Are you familiar with any of this week's games? Here are the results...

In between levelling up my awesome-looking cat-man in Final Fantasy XIV (finished the game as a summoner, now I've levelling white mage - I'm only Lv.32 at the moment) I've been replaying The Wind Waker lately, this time in glorious HD. The graphics look beautiful, and it's truly a wonderful game, but I still feel what I've always felt with this game, in that it seems really insubstantial for a Zelda game. The open-sea world is huge, and there's so much to explore and discover, which is great. But the majority of the game seems to be taken up with exploration and discovery. Whereas it was standard to have 8 main dungeons in a Zelda game, Wind Waker only has 5. I can remember the feeling of being cheated, the first time I played it. When I found the giant fish Jabun, I was eagerly awaiting dungeon number 3. Maybe it would be inside the fish's belly like in Ocarina of Time! But no... Jabun just gives you the pearl and you leave without having to do anything.

Similarly, late in the game (I just played this bit tonight) when you finally confront the terrifying-looking ghost ship that you've been dreading the whole game, it's only a single room with a couple of enemies that are already familiar by this point in the game. That could have been a whole dungeon.

(Thankfully, in Phantom Hourglass they made the ghost ship much more substantial, and the sand ship in Skyward Sword was a great dungeon)

Don't get me wrong, Wind Waker is still a wonderful game, and over the last couple of weeks it has owned my soul in a way that only Zelda games can. But it's not my favourite in the series. My three favourites are A Link To The Past, Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess. Those three just did pretty much everything perfectly. I wonder what the new 3DS Zelda will be like... That's only a few weeks away, isn't it?

In other news, the new Batman game (which by all accounts isn't as good as the previous ones) came out yesterday... on Xbox and PS3... But not on WiiU. What gives?? I want to support the poor struggling console and show the game makers that yes, WiiU owners DO want to buy games for it. But they make it difficult when they delay the WiiU version by two weeks, but let everybody else play the game! No official reason has been given for the delay. I'm thinking surely Microsoft and Sony have put a little something into Ubisoft's pockets to make this happen. Eurgh.

The new consoles come out in a couple of weeks. As it is, I could not be less interested in getting one. There is not a single game even on the horizon that makes me keen on shelling out top-dollar for a whole new machine. I'm thinking when the PS4 version of FFXIV gets released I might upgrade (since Square-Enix will apparently let you do it for free) but until then there is nothing. Nothing at all. Possibly one of the worst launch lineups ever.

So I'll keep on gaming! I have FOUR MORE VIDEOS scheduled for this blog. I'm hoping I can get them done by the end of this year, because I want to start a whole new blog in 2014... Watch this space! ;-)

Hope everything's going all right for you! See ya! ^_^

PAX!!

Just a quick update. I just got home from the PAX AUS convention, here in sunny Melbourne! (That's a joke, by the way... it's pouring rain today...)

It was really cool, lots of fun gamey stuff to look at, and my poor 3DS almost had a meltdown with the hundreds of StreetPasses I collected today!

I sat in on a panel with Gabe and Tycho (creators of Penny Arcade, and by extension, PAX) as Gabe drew the newest comic. So cool to watch! It will be up on penny-arcade.com on Monday. Let's just say it features an Australian legend... the "drop bear." (For those of you who have no idea what the heck I'm talking about, it was once funny to tell tourists all these tall tales about dangerous animals we had in Australia. The drop bear is one of those legends.) It was hilarious when one of the guys asking a question at the mike made the point that koalas actually have two thumbs, and Gabe spent a good 5-10 minutes correcting the drop bear's hands, which he had originally drawn as simple teddy-bear hands. A redback spider and a hotdog fairy were also added in at the last minute.

I also got a chance to play some upcoming WiiU games, which was cool. Pikmin 3 was great, although from what I played, pretty much just an HD upgrade to the previous games. Which isn't a bad thing, certainly, but it's not going to set the world on fire with its originality. I'll definitely be grabbing it on its release next week though. My first WiiU game since launch! Huzzah! I played it with the Wiimote and nunckuk, which I found to be a really intuitive control setup in the Wiimakes of the first two games. I'll be interested to try it out with the gamepad as well. I think I'd miss the direct aiming too much.

I also played Super Mario 3D world. I got a chance to play every demo level available, and I played as Mario, Princess and Toad. It should be a lot of fun, but it did get a bit frustrating when one or more characters got left behind and fell off the screen. And to the poor saps who will inevitably play this game with a Wiimote, using the D-pad for this game SUCKS! I hope there is the option to use a classic controller, or at the very least a nunchuk. Think of how irritating the D-pad was in Metroid Other M and you'll get an idea. It just doesn't work for 3D gaming.

Wind Waker HD looks great. But it's Wind Waker. Nothing new here. I'm really looking forward to traversing the seas again later on in the year, but yeah, it's still just The Wind Waker.

So yeah. PAX was cool.

Oh, and how AMAZING was Nintendo, just quietly throwing Earthbound out there on the Virtual Console yesterday? It's only like, 18 years late, but Mother 2 has FINALLY been released in the PAL regions! Huzzah!! Even though I paid through the nose for my cartridge about a year or two ago, I don't mind forking out the extra $13 for the WiiU copy. For one, it has all of the bells-and-whistles, off-TV play, Miiverse, etc. But also, I'm happy to support Nintendo in releasing more obscure foreign titles on the Virtual Console. Seiken Densetsu 3, next Nintendo!!

EPISODE 43.5

Hooray, a new video! ^_^

Enjoy!

Any memories of these games to share?

During the past couple of weeks I played another game which could only be described as "retro" now: Spyro The Dragon. It was on special for about 3 bucks on PSN, so I thought "why not?"

On its initial release I'd only played the first couple of levels, figured out that it wasn't anywhere near as good as Mario 64 or Banjo-Kazooie, and didn't bother with it after that. Now, all these years later, I can appreciate it on its own merits. It's such a calm, relaxed kind of game. There's no urgency, not really much challenge, just the pleasant experience of exploring the worlds and collecting treasures. I enjoyed it a whole lot more than I thought I would. I even played all the way through to the end! The last boss was a PIG, but I persevered and eventually beat the game.

Well done, Insomniac. I know I'm 15 years too late, but that was a good game... well, except for the HORRID camera system, but you know that that sucked, right?

STILL PLAYING...

Hi all. I haven't made the next video yet. (There will be 2 games in the next vid, and I'm halfway through playing the first one, so I'm afraid it won't be uploaded for a while...)

In the meanwhile, have you seen this guy yet? Dude is my HERO. (Love how tolerant his cat is too!) ^_^

I can legitimately walk through a video game store these days and say, "There's nothing here I want to buy." I still have, of course, the big pile-of-shame that needs to be systematically played through. There is a danger to all of this though... I pre-ordered something at EB yesterday... Something that threatens to suck away all available hours of my day...

I spent over 3 years as a citizen of FFXI's Vana'diel, and watching the trailers for the remake of FFXIV, I can't help but get really excited about it. I actually own the original P.C. version, but I honestly didn't get a chance to play it much. My computer is waaaay underpowered for modern-day graphics, even with all the bells and whistles switched off, so I only really tried it out of curiosity. What I played was okay, but not to the same level of enjoyment and immersion as FFXI.

From what I've been hearing, the last couple of years tweaking and redesigning have paid off and FFXIV is pretty darn cool to play now. Looking forward to the end of August! :-)

EPISODE 37.5

Episode 37-and-a-half-a-go-go, baby!

Any memories of these games to share? Here's what I thought of this week's games...

It's absolutely gob-smacking to see how much the Game Boy Mega Man games go for on eBay these days. Have a look at this, as of a-few-minutes-ago...

Don't you wish you had a time machine, so you could go back to the past and tell yourself how much these rare games would eventually become?

On a somewhat unrelated note, I've been playing another retro-ish Game Boy game over the past couple of weeks, Wario Land 2. The game is fantastic! I can't believe I never played it back-in-the-day. I love that there's no deaths, no Game Overs, Wario is actually invincible. That doesn't make the game easy though, some of the later levels are quite tricky. I love it when games developers think outside the box. I've got Wario Land 3 sitting there on my shelf waiting to be played as well. I might play a few more games before diving into that one.

I'm determined to finish up with these "catch-up" episodes in the next few months. I've got an idea for an entirely new blog in 2014, so I want to make sure this one is well-and-truly put to bed. But there's still more games to play! See you next time! :-D

EPISODE 33.5

Feels like it took forever, but here it is, folks!

While the vast majority of games that I've been playing catch-up on are "sitters" (which makes sense, since they were the games that just slipped under the radar first time around) occasionally there's a new gem that slips through, and this week it's Goof Troop. Sure, it's super-short and super-easy, but it's one that I'd be happy to play again, preferably with another player.

It's a shame, I had so much footage of the weird and wacky creatures I evolved into during E.V.O., but I just couldn't fit them all in the video. Oh well.

Even though I dissed Elizabeth and Luigi in the video, I have finished Bioshock Infinite and I'm about 3/4 through Luigi's Mansion 2. Both fantastic games in their own right. I found the over-reliance on shooting highly regrettable in Bioshock, in a very similar manner that I would get frustrated in the Uncharted games, when you're getting involved and immersed in the story and suddenly the game would say, "Stop the story. Now just shoot at people for a few minutes. Survived? Good. Back on with the story." I just feel it could have been so much bigger than it currently is, simply because they feel like they HAVE to make it a shooting game for it to sell well. Disappointing, but the experience of playing it is still worth it. Luigi's a lot of fun too, in a slow-paced, exploration kind of way.

So how about that counter, eh? Incredible!! Thanks for visiting. Feel free to leave a comment and say hi!

BEST DECADE??

Last night on the Good Game T.V. show they discussed three different decades of gaming: the 80s, the 90s and the 00s.

(Click here to view the episode)

Which decade would you give the prize to? While there were definitely classics in the 80s and 00s, my heart's with the 90s. (obviously) ;-p

New episode will hopefully be up in a number of days. Yay!

OH... EM... JEE...!!

This video... just makes me so happy! I haven't been so in love with Capcom than the time when they announced Mega Man 9. My most-wanted game for 2013? Yeah, I think so! :-D

STILL BREATHING!

Hello there faithful bloggles.

(I know you're out there because the counter keeps climbing up! Check it out, I'll be hitting 50k before too long... that's insane...)

Sorry about the lack of updates lately. I've got a rather large project on at work at the moment (I'm writing a play) and I promised myself that I wouldn't dedicate time to blogging until it's completed. I have given myself the deadline of Monday to finish it, so hopefully I'll be back on track before too long with some more retro gaming.

In the meantime, have a picture of my Final Fantasy collection!

Hooray for consistent box-art! (The GameBoy games are iffy, but I'm still living in hope that Square-Enix will re-release FF5 and FF6 on the 3DS. Hell, I'd even buy a Vita to play them, but... surely Square-Enix isn't THAT foolish...)

In other news, it's so darn HOT here at the moment. March is supposed to be AUTUMN, but the past couple of weeks have been hotter than January or March! Darn global warming! *grumblegrumble*

Ah well, if the end of the world's coming, at least I've been playing some good games. I'm approaching the end (I think) of Ni No Kuni. It's a really wonderful game. It's certainly not perfect (the story just kinda turns into a giant RPG cliche once Oliver reaches the "Another World" and I'm still a bit "meh" about the battle system) but it's certainly kept me interested the past month or so.

It sucks to be a WiiU owner right now, but to be honest, I probably wouldn't have time to play it anyway so I'm not that upset. The Google Maps app is super-awesome though!

Happy gaming folks!

EPISODE 30.5

And we're BACK for 2013! :-)

Did you notice my new technique for presenting the games? (I can't believe it's taken me so long to think of this) Basically, to save from having boring black bars on the left and right of the screen when a 4:3 game is being played, I've got a darkened, blurred and stretched copy of the footage going in the background. I think it works pretty well.

Anything to add here? Maybe you think Flashback is the most underappreciated masterpiece of the gaming world. Perhaps you think Duck Tales 2 is absolute rubbish. Maybe you just need someone to talk to! Leave a comment.

Here's the results of this week's video.

Lately I've been playing a bit of Ni No Kuni (absolutely beautiful) and occasional spurts of Ghost Trick. (so entertaining and amusing) I was a pretty horrified when I learnt of Rayman Legends' 7-month delay, especially since the game is actually finished, but when I stop and think about it, my pile of shame is absolutely enormous, so I suppose a delay isn't such an awful thing. Back to it then!

HERE WE GO AGAIN!

 Back in the editing chair for the first time in 2013!

 

Just realised that this is a view of this blog that nobody's really seen... and yet, it's the only view I really know!... Boooooy, do I know this view well by now!! ;-p

 

So yeah, there's a new vid in the pipeline. Watch this space!

AMAZING!!

Caught a plane up to Sydney last night & just saw the SSO perform the "Legend of Zelda: Symphony of the Goddesses" concert at the Opera House!

It was brilliant! I was expecting them to pretty much play the CD tracks live, but that wasn't the case at all; there were a few very pleasant surprises!

The audience went crazy for it. There were some brilliant cosplays (my favourite being the demented king & Zelda out of the CD-i games) and it was a Street Pass bonanza!!

I've had a couple of people asking me when the next vid will be posted... Eh... It's coming. It certainly won't be in the next week, but I'll try and make an effort to get my butt into gear in the near future! Party on dudes, I'm off to see some of the Sydney sights!