EPISODE 65.5

First one for 2014!

Can you believe I started this blog over 3 years ago...? I can't...

So had you played either of these before? They're fairly obscure. Here are the ratings...

In the video I mentioned an interview with a couple of guys who worked on Maui Mallard. It was on 1up.com, which sadly has closed down, but the interview is still online.

You can read it here.

I hope you had a happy new year. I've been finishing unfinished games left-right-and-centre lately. Rayman Legends (fantastic), Mario 3D World (brilliant), Mario & Luigi: Dream Team (very good, but a smidge too long, and I wasn't happy with the almost-game-breaking bugs with the 3DS's accelorometer), Ratchet & Clank: Nexus (quite good, but it's short, and certainly not top-form for the series) and Batman: Arkham Origins. (decent, but nowhere near as good or original as the first two games)

I'm just about to go away on holiday for a week, so I'll likely have time to catch up on a few more handheld games that have fallen by the wayside. My pile of shame is pretty... well, shameful.

Stay cool everyone. See you soon. ^_^

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?