I played a lot of digital titles this week and stuck with almost none of them (no respawns) but enjoyed myself quite a bit. Also some disc-based ones I did stick with a little longer.

In console gaming, there is a legend known as the Third Console Curse. Most consoles are not successful enough to receive a follow-up. If they are, then a third console is still not guaranteed. It is a hard industry not only to break into, but sustain a market share in. Yet something happens with the third console every time. It fails to meet the company's initial goals. Maybe it still sells fine, maybe the console has a wonderful library of games. Even if that is the case, the company loses market share and is in a worse spot at the end of the console's life than they were going into it. It could be arrogance from success. It could be a lack of perspective from being too used to success. Maybe it's just rotten luck. But it's consistent.

I'm getting closer to the end of my 360 games now, but it may be a few more weeks still before I move on to PS3 or Wii. I really can't wait to start those. 

My birthday is coming up soon (September 15 to be exact), but the presents are for you!  You get game reviews to read that I’ve recently written over at GamerDad.com!  Just what you wanted, right?  Right?  Anyway, please click on the links and read as many as you can, and maybe post a ‘like’ or comment or two.  I’d appreciate it.  And just for fun, why don’t you send me a pretend birthday present in the comments section?  It’s the thought that counts, literally!  OK, let’s begin!

My brother and nephew have just made their first “Let’s Play” style YouTube video, so I thought I’d share it with you here.  They play an Xbox One game called Party Animals, where plush toy animals fight to the death.  I’ve played it before with them, and while I don’t understand the appeal, my nephew just loves it!  Anyway, click on the link below and watch it if you can!

I feel like I may run out of twin-stick shooters (and those closely related isometric shooters) soon and so I made a list of "blobbers" (games with a party of characters that move together) to check out. It fits my theme because it started in 1981 with Wizardry. Here's the list. 

I've come up with a 2025 plan for my gaming. The goal is to put the entire history of video games into 12 parts so I can travel in time over the course of the year (I do this for music and literature as well). Here's what I came up with. 

Earlier this year, the ESA announced they would be cancelling E3 yet again and they wouldn’t have it anymore.  So I wanted to say my final goodbyes and reminisce on my favorite E3 memories here.  The reasons why I didn’t do this earlier when they first announced it I was pretty busy at the time, and I figured I’d do it when E3 usually occurred around now.

It's been an interesting week trying to work down the metacritic list for '95-'99, grinding for Game Pass Rewards points and beating Diablo IV. Details follow. 

Wow, 2023 has been an incredible year for gaming, one of the very best! And here we are at the end of the year, so let’s look back at some games, shall we? You guys probably know that I’m a big Nintendo guy. In fact, I don’t even have the other consoles (mostly because I don’t have time to play them all). This was a great year for Nintendo, we got so many fantastic games on the Switch. This year I beat a total of 26 games! (I was hoping to beat 30, but you know how it goes)

Playstation won the console wars. Super Mario 64 won at home worldwide. Firaxis, Valve and IGN were all founded this year. Coolness! That year I and my friend Mad Krammer were playing mostly FPS games ported from PC to PS, N64 and Saturn. Over the years, though, I've discovered quite a few others. 

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. 

There are so many games on the SEGA Genesis Mini 2 that I had to split this blog into two parts.  So make sure to catch last week’s installment if you missed it.  Anyway, here we’ll go over the rest of the Genesis games as well as the unreleased stuff and SEGA CD titles.  OK let’s begin!

You are crossing the wide expanse of Lemurian grasslands to reach the mystical gardens of Ur where the crystal goblet Crystofel is guarded by the Lamia of the Fountains of Lamneth.

Weird month for me. My weekend is Tuesday and Thursday, so I added a half day after work today in anticipation of Thursday. I played one game for Microsoft rewards points, a second for Game Pass rewards points and then another randomly chosen game. I'm really enjoying the randomly rolled games. I love not knowing what's going to be next. 

This generation of gaming has been all about reviving and re-releasing old classic games in the name of cashing in on nostalgia, errr, preserving the history of video games. Among the latest games to make a reappearance from the dead are a pair of 16-bit LucasArts classics, namely, Zombies Ate My Neighbors and its lesser-known sequel, Ghoul Patrol, in a downloadable double-pack on all the major consoles and PC. 

I like to figure out a 12 part study of some sort to cover an entire year. This year it was all about history, and I was able to divide western history into 12 parts. I can't help thinking about next year already and one of my ideas is console generations. The only problem is that there are only 9 of them. So how to make it 12? Any ideas? I'll list the 9 I got so far.

I'm something of an anomaly when it comes to fighting games. Okay, I'm something of an anomaly when it comes to a lot of games. Anyway, a new version of my favorite fighting game of all time was released last week. I speak, of course, of Sega's Virtua Fighter 5: Ultimate Showdown, which came out on PS4 and is currently free to PS+ subscribers.