Quotes

Genre:  RPG
Platform:  SNES

I had never heard of nor played Earthbound when it was out for the SNES.  It’s too bad I hadn’t, as this little gem goes for upwards of $200 for the cart only on Ebay now.  I decided to see what all the hype is about.

I found the ROM online some time ago and I’m playing it on my GCW Zero.  I’m not too far into the game, but it’s certainly not as I expected.  Based on the box art, I expected maybe a hardcore Japanese-inspired mech game.  This is almost the exact opposite.  You play as a kid who is trying to find out what a mysterious “meteorite” is that landed not too far from your house.  That’s about as far as I am into the story right now.

I will say that the kid’s parents in this game should get a nod for “worst parents of the world”.  At one point, I went to talk to the mother and she gave me some sarcastic response like “yeah, you’re cool, whatever…”.  What?  They also don’t seem to care that you are running around the town in the middle of the night and trying to interfere with police investigations.  Whatever.

I do look forward to seeing what else this game has in store for me.  Please, if you’ve played it, no spoilers!

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I just watched this video on YouTube.  It’s a guy who creates his own mini SNES by using a Raspberry Pi Zero chip.  He sculpts the enclosure himself out of plastic and clay and does all of the soldering himself for the connections.  It looks like a lot of fun!  I can follow what he’s doing, but I have never done anything like this myself.  I bought my PSP for the purpose of modding it, but just haven’t had the time to do so.  Maybe some day!

 

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Genre:  Music/Rhythm
Platform:  XBox 360

I have made my love of music/rhythm games known through my post about Rock Band 3.  I have gone back and started to play another game in the Rock Band series, LEGO Rock Band.  This is a cute game and I think it was designed specifically for the younger fans.  It has a “super easy” difficulty, which I’ve not seen anywhere else.  The song list is so-so, but it is still a lot of fun to play.

You can sing, play drums, bass or lead guitar.  It does have a story mode and is pretty cute.  At one point, you even get to meet LEGO Queen and play as LEGO Brian May.  It is a fairly consistent story format for Rock Band games.  As you play, you collect money (studs in this game), fans and stars.  You can use your studs to buy new items, including new forms of transportation.  New transportation means new venues, which means more songs.

One thing I don’t like about this game is that it makes you replay a lot of songs.  In one sitting, I played one particular song three times, which is too much repetition for my taste.  I’m going to finish the story mode so I can rack up the achievements.  Overall, it’s an ok game, but I’m not in love with it.  If you’re a fan of the music genre, you’ll like it.

 

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Olympics: Japanese PM Abe during closing ceremony

Just in case anyone doubted the impact that video games now have on our society, let’s take a look at Japan’s introduction at last night’s Olympics closing ceremony from Rio De Janeiro.  Video games are a part of Japan’s identity and they showed the world that.  The image you see above is the Japanese prime minister sporting a Mario hat after he came up through a pipe.  This was preceded by an animated segment featuring Mario himself.

Mario-Olympics1

Of all of Japan’s potential rich culture and heritage, they chose to show us their video game and anime presence in the world.  I found this to be quite significant and pretty awesome.  This is one of the primary reasons my first out-of-country trip is going to be to Japan (hopefully next year!).

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Max Morton 1

I’ve been playing Prison Architect on the XBone for a while now and I suddenly have a problem.  I’d like you to meet Max Morton.  As you can see in the stats above, Max is a bad boy.  Max is an asshole.  He’s been in my prison for 33 days now and he’s unlike any other prisoner I’ve had in my 300+ hours playing.  If you notice, he is now sentenced to 890 years in prison.  Here’s another look as to why:

Max Morton 2

This list is big and it’s full of murders.  In one day, Max killed 14 of my staff, mostly guards.  It was a slaughter and I was powerless to prevent it.  He is permanently in solitary confinement now, but he is so strong that he can break down the door when he gets really mad.  I have an armed guard posted in the solitary block.  Max is never happy.  He gets spun up and goes on murderous rampages.  I built a death row facility just so I could kill him, but the game doesn’t work that way.  It seems that I am forever doomed to life with Max in my prison.

“Try leniency!”, I hear you exclaim.  Yeah, I’m not falling for that again.  I have tried that with him a few times now, but the result is always the same – dead staff and inmates as he goes off on a tirade because he’s not near enough to a phone or something.  He’s been quiet for 3 days now, which is UNHEARD of.  I’m just waiting for this ticking time bomb to explode again.  I may have to build a new solitary block just for him.

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Pikachu crying

This is likely going to get me kicked out of some gaming circles and secret societies, but I have a confession to make.  I have never played a minute of a Pokemon game.  Not the original Gameboy games, not Nintendo DS, not the new mobile game.  Not. One. Minute.  I have never seen the show, either.

I don’t have anything against the odd little creatures, though.  I actually have a few of the games in my collection and I fully intend to play them, it’s just never been very high on my list.  I was in high school when they exploded into popularity here in the US and video games had fallen off my radar a bit at that time.

For those of you really into Pokemon, which game should I start with?  I have just about all of the pre-DS games on my GCW Zero.

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Genre:  Strategy/Simulation
Platform:  Playstation Portable (PSP)

What Did I Do To Deserve This, My Lord!? 2.  Yeah, that’s really the name of this game.  I was so excited to get it.  It looked like a lot of fun.  The premise is simple enough – you build a dungeon by digging out the earth and creating monsters to help the villain avoid the heroes.  Sounds easy enough, right?

Wrong.  Totally, completely wrong.  This is the hardest game I’ve ever tried to learn.  I started by going through their numerous tutorials, but I could barely pass those.  This game requires you to start, develop and maintain a very delicate ecosystem below the ground.  Your basic monsters are eaten by the next tier, and so on.  But you can’t run out of nourishment for them or you won’t have any future growth.  No matter how much I tried, I just could not get it and pass more than the first few levels.  I tried A LOT.

This game came with the original on the UMD (disk), so I tried that as well.  Failed there, too.  Only on this one, I can’t get passed the first level.  I have looked up tutorials online, but the consensus seems to be that this game is just stupid hard.  Here’s the thing, though – it’s still a really fun game!  There’s some sort of satisfaction digging in a large area and trying to thwart the hero.  The game uses humor very well, too.  I would definitely recommend that you try it for yourself.  Maybe you’ll think in a different way and be wildly successful.

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