PixlBit

I played a little bit of several titles, but what I mostly played was Earth Defense Force 2025 with my friend and an assortment of randos. 

Mattel Electronics Baseball Handheld: While waiting in line at Fan Expo I played this LED handheld game I used to have as a kid in the late 70s. You play 5 innings. There are two difficulty levels that change the pitch speed. The faster pitch speed gives you more realistic scores. I noticed that the "runners" come in different speeds randomly, so you can sometimes get extra bases or have to hold up if your runner is slow. Also curve balls are thrown. Neat! It was more engaging than I expected 40+ years later. 

Assassin's Creed Origins: I played the Discovery Mode for this a little while back but not the main game. I did it for rewards points, but I was glad to check out the campaign. I played what amounts to the tutorial. The first story missions introduce the essential mechanics of the game and reveal your pet hawk. I rode a camel. I enjoyed it. I left it on my hard drive to return to whenever. 

Adios: Got this as a Games with Gold freebie. It's a story based game, like a point-and-click. You're on a farm talking to your partner in some mysterious occupation that sounds like either government agents, drug runners, or detectives. You are trying to quit and your partner is trying to convince you otherwise. As you talk, you perform chores on the farm. I was kind of enjoying it until my character got stuck in the environment and couldn't move. I think maybe there are some technical issues with this. 

Atari 50: Got tired of waiting for a sale and bought this at $40. June is 1970's month for me, and I wanted to focus on Atari in gaming, so no more waiting. The collection has a timeline mode with lots of interviews, quotes, scanned documents and trivia. I went through the first two which was the arcade history and the Atari 2600 history. Along the way you can play the games mentioned and I sampled many of them. The display for these games is the best I've ever seen! Pong looks just like on the original cabinet screen. 2600 games look just like on the original system attached to a CRT monitor. You can change all of these to make them look more modern, but that kind of ruins the point of revisiting the games as they were. But, there are a few modern remakes of the games along the timeline like one for Haunted House done in 3D, Yars Revenge with spiffy new graphics, and others. It's a lot of fun going through the timeline of events, listening to interviews, seeing old commercials, and playing the games all at once. I can't wait to do the other timelines and sample games I've never seen before. 

Oh, and I saw that in an interview David Crane was wearing a Stampede bronze belt buckle. I want!

Earth Defense Force 2025: My friend and I played this again very exhaustively, mostly via online multiplayer. I was going for the Ranger achievement for beating the game on Hard difficulty. There are 94 levels to beat. The later levels after around 65 are no joke and having the four player max is very helpful. We played online a lot until other people came into the game. We often played with high level Air Raiders who made the battles much more interesting. They usually brought in tanks or mechs that multiple people could get into. I often tooled around as machine gunner in a rail gun tank. Higher difficulty levels, and four players really make this game even more fun than usual. Battles are crazy hectic as you're fighting ants and robots, reviving fellow players and trying to coordinate to get through the levels. I was able to beat the game on Hard for my Ranger. Now I'm working on a Hard run with the Wing Diver. She's able to fly and use energy weapons. Here she is taking a lot of acidic guff from unruly ants. No respect!