In the little chunks of time I had between work, trip preparations, and rest, I started playing Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga from the Game Boy Advance collection I got with the expansion pass to my Nintendo Online account. That has long been one of my favorite Game Boy Advance titles and I was excited to play it again since my GBA hasn’t worked properly for a few years now and my DS, which I used to play GBA games with a backlight, broke a couple summers ago (and my attempts at fixing it fell by the wayside when I couldn’t find a decent 3D printable shell design to use). Having it on the Switch means it is easy to play in fits and starts, and its nature as a somewhat straight-forward RPG means I won’t have any trouble coming back to the game if I wind up not playing it for weeks or months at a time. Plus, I first played this when I was right on the cusp of reclaiming gaming for myself, without interference from my parents or brother, so there’s a decent bit of nostalgia to the game, even if I’ve played it fairly frequently over the years thanks to the slow roll-out of titles in the same general series.
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Finally Following Through on my Naked and Afraid Breath of the Wild Challenge
Over the weekend, I finally started on a project that I’ve talked about doing for about five or six years now. I began a play-through of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild where I will allow myself to wear nothing but hats (aside from a few plot-centric moments that require me to wear more clothes such as entering the Gerudo city and certain quests that require me to wear specific things) and rely heavily on environmental fire as a weapon, all while playing the game on Master Mode. I’ve already finished most of the stuff on the plateau and am ready to move into the wider world. I’ve also already died half a dozen times, mostly due to my own hubris and forgetting to focus on any bokoblin with a bow since most of them will be able to instantly kill me. I’ve found myself frequently frustrated by how quickly a fight ends once I make a mistake, but that’s part of the reason I’m calling this whole personal challenge mode the “Naked and Afraid Run.” The kicker for all of this is that I’m streaming it on my relatively unused Twitch channel so that everyone can come watch/heckle me as I play. All in good fun, of course.
Continue readingKirby’s Return To Kirby’s Dream Land
Yesterday, I wrote about my return to one of the first video games I ever played and the first game I ever owned as I played Kirby’s Dreamland via the Game Boy add-on to my Nintendo Online subscription. After playing that a couple times, and in the time I could spare from playing Chained Echoes (a wonderful game you absolutely should play), I’ve been playing through Kirby’s Return to Dream Land: Deluxe. It doesn’t quite hit the same, emotionally (probably due to the lack of nostalgia), but it has the warm, pleasant, and upbeat vibe that I’ve come to associate with pretty much every Kirby game. I have only played a couple hours, so far–just enough time to really get a feel for what the game brings to the table–but that’s enough for me to be excited to continue playing. Not because I expect this game to be some kind of masterpiece, but because it has a fun, relatively simple gameplay loop and embraces being exactly what it is in a way that few game franchises ever seem to.
Continue readingMy Return To Kirby’s Dream Land
One of the latest Nintendo Online subscription perks added after the latest Nintendo Direct in February is a collection of Game Boy and Game Boy Color games. As someone who first got their start on a good old Game Boy Pocket, I was looking forward to indulging in a bit of nostalgia, especially because the games are all fairly short and quick to play (by today’s standards, especially). Opening it up after it finished download was like finding my collection of Game Boy games that vanished when I was nine or ten. All of my earliest gaming memories, save Pokémon, were staring back at me from my TV. I had a difficult time picking what to play first but eventually settled on Kirby’s Dream Land. As I launched the game and started playing pretty much immediately, I felt a level of familiarity I hadn’t expected. After all, it has been over two decades since I last played the game.
Continue readingI’m Tired and Sad, So Let’s Talk About The Legend of Zelda: Episode 20
I cracked the Breath of the Wild open (metaphorically speaking) for the first time in a while. I was at the end of a very tiring day, I was excited about the recently released trailer, and I just wanted to provide myself with a little comfort. I figured at least thinking about Breath of the Wild would be relaxing, since I love to just wander around the world, doing whatever catches my attention. As I loaded my most recent save file, I was reminded that I hadn’t finish my most-recent play-through of Master Mode. I don’t remember why I stopped, though I suspect I just got distracted by another game (since that’s why I usually stop playing something), but I realized I still had a long way to go before I was finished with that run. I closed the game shortly after that. I felt more inclined to start the Master Mode file over than continue it, but I also knew I wasn’t really in the right place to make that decision, then. Playing the game all the way through is a big committment and I needed rest, not another item on my to-do list.
Continue readingMy Journey Through The Pokémon Games Continues
After many long months, I finally finished Pokémon X. I still have a legendary or two to capture, but I’ll admit that I’m happy to be through the game. None of the post-game stuff in this generation is particularly interesting to me and I’m very tired of how cinematic parts of the game are. I’m not there for cutscenes or to watch movies I can’t skip. I’m there to play Pokémon while riding my exercise bike and going to sleep. I don’t want to be actually engaged or entertained, just mildly distracted. Which is a bit of a problem, since I moved from Kalos to Alola. I decided to skip straight to Ultra Sun rather than consider playing Moon since I remembered how painful the first iteration of the game was and how much of that pain they eliminated in the Ultra version of the game, but I completely forgot how frustrating it was to hunt for Pokémon in a world where the Pokémon vary from one grass patch to the next on the various routes.
Continue readingThe Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Has Revived My Enthusiasm
Now that I’ve had a little time to rest, recover, and try to avoid obsessively rewatching the new trailer for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, I think I’m ready to write about just it. I was tempted to do that yesterday, but I was so overwrought from everything going on that I couldn’t handle even just being excited about something. I had to put it out of my mind (and stop trying to preorder the Collector’s Edition) so I could calm down and try to get some rest. I didn’t really get much rest (since every other part of my life is still a stressful mess), but I’ve managed to collect myself enough to say that I’m super excited to see what the game is going to bring to the table. I mean, it looks like Link loses an arm right away and then gets that cool, clawed tech arm that seems to be an expansion on his Sheikah Slate abilities, so I can only hope it will keep getting better from there.
Continue readingMy Pokémon X-perience Is Kinda Forgettable
I’ve been doing a replay of the Pokémon franchise over the past year or so (very casually, mostly while riding my exercise bike or for a few scattered minutes here or there) and I started Gen 5 a month ago with Pokémon X. Now, I’ve never actually finished Pokémon X before. I’m not sure I’ve even gotten to the point where I’d fight or capture the titular legendary Pokémon in either of my past play-throughs. I honestly can’t remember how far I got in any of my previous runs because they were all fairly focused play-throughs that happened with multiple years between them. I think I did my last attempt at beating the game in the months before Pokémon Sword and Shield came out, and the one before that was in the year or two after the game originally released. Long enough ago that I don’t remember exactly when it happened.
Continue readingComplicated Recollections of Kirby 64
As a small festive gift for myself, I decided to purchase the expansion pass to my Nintendo Online subscription. I already had the only DLC in the pack for a game I own, thanks to my hefty playtime on Animal Crossing, but I was excited by the idea of playing a bunch of my favorite Nintendo 64 games without needing to do my usual amount of coaxing, constant saving, and sacrificing to the Nintengods required to use my old, dusty, beat-up N64. I haven’t looked at it the same since that time I was playing through Paper Mario, got all the way through a save-less dungeon and boss fight combo, and then had the game crash/N64 shut off AS I WAS OPENING THE SAVE SCREEN TO SELECT A FILE TO SAVE TO. Definitely not still mad about that one. The only classic the expansion pass is missing that I feel a hankering to replay is Donkey Kong 64 and I’m used to ignoring that one since my old copy of the game doesn’t seem to work very well.
Continue readingThoughts on the Conclusion of Pokémon Violet
Spoiler Warning: This post discusses the main arc of the latest Pokémon games and while it doesn’t go into detail, I know that some people would prefer to avoid any kind of information at all. This spoiler warning is for those people. And it starts in the fourth paragraph below (this is paragraph zero).
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