There’s a fishing game in Japan by Namco called Ace Angler, and you view the screen horizontally to the ground like you’re looking into a fishing pond. It’s pretty popular, and I think I even played it once at Round 1 arcade here in the US, or at least an imitation of it. And now you can play a home version of the arcade game on the Switch with Ace Angler: Fishing Spirits. It was available digitally in the US last year, but I imported a physical copy of it because I’m a freak about stuff like that. But the game is entirely in English so there’s no language barrier here. I asked for it for Christmas, but since imports can sometimes take a while, I actually didn’t get it until around Easter this past year. And I finally got around to playing it recently. The cool thing about the Switch game is that they made the arcade game like it has its own amusement park and aquarium. So it’s like a cross between a Namco Museum game (albeit for only one arcade game) and Animal Crossing. You even create your own avatar that looks like something out of Animal Crossing, and since I like the aquariums in those games, as well as Namco Museums in general, this game really ticked off a lot of boxes for me! The game says it’s Ace Angler’s 10th anniversary, which I didn’t realize it had been around that long! But anyway, let me take you on a tour guide through the Ace Angler Aquarium and Arcade Amusement Park found in the Switch Fishing Spirits game!
It's almost August when I will be focusing my retro gaming on the 90s. That's NES, Genesis, SNES, PS and N64 for me. I don't have a Saturn anymore, never had a TG-16 or Neo Geo, and I didn't play handheld games until the DS. However I do now have the option to play Game Boy and GBC games on my Gamecube's GameBoy Player. So I may break that out too. Here's a list of stuff I'm interested in from 1990, more or less.
Welcome to the Pac-Man Museum+! My name is Cary, and I’ll be your tour guide today. Oh man, wouldn’t it be cool if there really was a Pac-Man Museum and I worked there? I’d be in heaven. Anyway, Pac-Man Museum+ is a collection of arcade and console games featuring Pac-Man. Kind of like the Namco Museums, just with Pac only. It’s available on most current consoles and PC, but I got the PS4 version because it was cheapest at 20 bucks. Plus it was a physical version, which I always like. Although I’m tempted to get it on Switch as well so I could have all those games portable. And I hear it’s also on Xbox Game Pass as of this writing, so if you have an Xbox One or X/S, check it out! All right, so come along with me on the tour of the 14 games on this collection!
Easter is coming up, so “Hoppy Easter!” Let’s go on an egg hunt and find game reviews I’ve recently written over at GamerDad.com. Every-bunny please click on the links and read as many as you can, and maybe even post a ‘like’ or comment or two. I’d appreciate it. OK, let’s hop to it!
One final part of my blog series on the TG-16 Mini! Last time we looked at some of the games on the Japanese PC Engine side, and now we’ll look at the rest of them. The games in this batch I’m more familiar with, because they were released in the US in some form or fashion either on this console, other consoles, or in the arcade. And they’re also made by well-known companies like Namco, Capcom, SEGA, Taito, and Konami. OK let’s finish this off!
Miniature versions of classic game consoles with pre-loaded games has become very popular in the past few years. First we got mini versions of the NES and SNES, and then SEGA came out with one for the Genesis. And now we have the Turbo Grafx-16 Mini! It was supposed to come out last year, but got delayed. Because of the Corona virus, I didn’t think it would ever come out. But a couple of months ago, I got mine in the mail! I just now got a chance to play it, so we’ll take a look at all the games on it. Because there are so many games (almost 60), I’ll have to split this up into several parts over the next few weeks.
Hey there, guys. It's that time of year again. I have really dropped the ball this year on blogging because I've been so busy, but I promise I will be more prolific next year (I'm already planning on participating in BAD 2020). So, as I do every year, I'll briefly mention the games I was able to beat this year. As many of you know, I'm a huge Nintendo fan, so these are all Nintendo games (or on Nintendo consoles), and some of them are even retro games (I'm fervently collecting SNES carts). In 2019, I was able to beat 18 games!
So, in the last 4 months or so since I posted a blog entry, the only big life change was when, at the end of July, I was in my first fender bender. It was an accident and it was my fault (I was cited for failure to yield) and no one was hurt (thank god), but the 1999 Honda CR-V was totalled. The front passenger side looked like it was caved in. I didn't have the car for very long (6 months shy of 2 years) but it was a good vehicle and it hurt to see it go. Again: accident, no one was hurt but I liked that car.
So another E3 has come and gone, and it’s another year where I was denied a press pass. Ever since 1996, I was going to E3 pretty regularly, but for some reason a few years ago, they stopped letting me in. And yet somehow I was able to get a press pass last year. But not this time! They may say it’s because the numbers of the site I write for are too low, but I’m beginning to wonder if it’s really because I’m just too weird for E3. And if that statement has you intrigued, then please read on for my unique reactions and commentary on things I read and watched about this year’s show.
I’m about half way through the game for the second time. It’s enjoyable and uncomfortable at the same time. That's Bioshock for you.
To celebrate the recent release of Kirby Star Allies for Nintendo Switch, let’s look at another Kirby game that came out earlier this year that I just now got around to playing. It’s Kirby Battle Royale, a 3DS game featuring four player battle style mini-games with Kirby and his different copy abilities. There are ten different types of arenas to battle in, and they’re all pretty interesting enough to be deemed ‘blog-worthy’ by me, so let’s take a look at them! Also be sure to stick around to the end, as I’ve got some news about HAL Laboratory (creators of Kirby), and their first new mobile game!
It’s hard to believe that it’s already been over five years since I helped PixlBit ring in Final Fantasy’s 25th anniversary with an exhaustive retrospective series, but here we are. Even though I missed the actual 30th anniversary of my favorite game franchise, I couldn’t let that milestone pass without doing something to show my love for this epic saga. To that end, I submit to you, our dear readers, my ordered ranking of the fifteen main games in the series. Naturally, this excludes spinoffs like Final Fantasy Tactics and direct sequels like Lightning Returns, and this is very much my list and in no way is PixlBit’s definitive order. But hey, everyone loves a good list, right? Each game features a quick paragraph reprising some of the information from the FF Retrospective, and a more personal take on each entry. I hope you enjoy!
In the second part of my look at the characters in Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite, we’ll go over the fighters on the Capcom side. I’m way more into video games (obviously, since I review them) than I am comic books, so hopefully I’ll sound a bit more knowledgeable here. So let’s dive right in. Oh yeah, some slight Story Mode spoilers here and there may happen, so you’ve been warned.
It’s no secret to the people at PixlBit that I am a huge fan of the Saints Row series. The last two games are among my favorite games from the last generation, and I eagerly await the next chapter in the increasingly bonkers tale of the Third Street Saints. In the interim, I am certainly interested in Agents of Mayhem, a spinoff of Saints Row that seeks to blend the over the top humor and gameplay from that franchise with the character and special powers of squad based shooters like Overwatch. After playing the game at E3 I am still interested, but I also have some concerns.
Recently I reviewed The Disney Afternoon Collection. It’s a compilation of Capcom’s NES titles that were based on shows on The Disney Afternoon, a block of Disney cartoons that aired back in the late 80’s and early 90’s. I really loved watching The Disney Afternoon as a kid, and I also enjoyed the NES games a lot, too. In fact, many of the games on this collection are more memorable to me than titles like Mario! They could’ve called this the Cary’s Childhood Collection! So I thought I’d go into more detail and share my memories of each of the NES games on this collection, and the cartoons they’re based on.
It's the peultimate day of BaD so even though I may not have gotten to every game in my collection, It's been a blast showcasing and highlighting my stupid collection of crap. So here are today's games!
A new year brings promise of new video games, so I thought I’d write about which ones I’m looking forward to this year. Of course there will probably be some announcements of new games throughout the year (like at E3), as it’s a bit early. And of course some things may be delayed, too. But anyway, let’s take a look at what I’m looking forward to playing and reviewing this year.
So I finished up with Skylanders Superchargers. I got every achievement except the one where you have to beat the game on Nightmare difficulty. I played several levels at that setting and it was fine until I hit a certain boss that seemed mostly unfair. The difficulty being just that you take much more damage from hits than other skill levels. I went through every Skylander I had and then played it again with my highest level ones first and still couldn't beat that thing. I can only imagine how bosses in the later stages of the game will be - nigh impossible. Of course, as you level up the portal, you gain abilities that help with Nightmare mode but I was well over level 70 and didn't feel like grinding a whole lot more. I did pull out all the Skylander characters I had and tried them out. That was fun. Each figure has very unique abilites that evolve as you level them up. I almost wanted to just level up all the figures just to see their special powers. Maybe with a half dozen level 20s (max level) I could handle Nightmare mode. It just seemed more work than I wanted to put into it. Maybe I'll dive in again someday when I want a serious challenge. I'm not trading in any of this stuff. I like them too much.
