Thanks for this, Nick.

Michael and I clicked from pretty much our first interaction back on 1up. We had some common interests outside of gaming and he trusted me enough that we could talk about family and othe issues. I was the first person to call him a great-horned owl fledgling, a description that he loved. We fell out of touch a while ago, something that I regret. He was a kind soul, I wish his inner demons hadn't gotten the best of him. I hope his next life is easier on him than this one was.

Looks like you've been busy. Now that I've heard the Ys game is good, I might have to look into that one. 

Fantasy Life i isn't really structureless, there's a story there, there's just more to do in between the story missions. Like doing quests for NPCs, and the various quests to raise your Life ranks. If you do end up playing it, let me know and I can give you some helpful tips that I wish I'd known when I started playing.

Always fun to see what you're up to. I think I may have played that Black Hole pinball table in real life on one of my tips to Boston to visit my uncle. He taught me how to play pinball, and knew where to find all the good tables.

The only Far Cry game I ever played was Blood Dragon. I loved the retro vibe from that game.

Pits are the pits. So are the stupid traps that spin you to a diffeent diection. Have you checked out the Wizardry remake yet? So good!

And did the Kirby controller work?

None of the games on the shareware disks my dad gave me were demos, either. They were full games.

You brought up a lot of the points my nephew Sawyer did about both the software and the technical difficulties with the mouse controls. I also will not be shelling out fo a new Pro Controller, since my old Pro Controller works just fine, other than not turning on the console. As my gaming area and my couch are very close to each other, I don't mind standing up to turn the console on with the power button. I will be getting a headset at some point, but not in the immediate future, because I need to buy a new car. My mechanic told me my old one isn't worth fixing.

Technically, Wizardry on the NES is a port of the original which came out in 1981 for the Apple II. This was my gateway drug to gaming when I played it fo the first time in 1982.

Dragon Warrior was a very grind heavy game, and that's saying something fo a series that is already grind heavy. I used to dash out, do three or four encounters in the immediate area around the castle, then dash back in. There are a couple of spots that you can wander into that aren't meant to be explored when you're lower level, but there's nothing that warns you about that, and you die with your first encounter. And money was soooo hard to come by, and not nearly enough equipment available to help you. I'm really looking forward to the remakes. Which means I should probably go back and finish off DQ 3 before they release 1&2, which 3 is the prequel to.

Someday, I will get to go to a Con.

A lot of those disks with games for both the Apple II and the IBMs (and IBM clones) were shareware. My step-dad used to give them to me, they frequently came with programs that were purchased and they were tossed in as freebies. Kind of like the demo disks that Sony used to send out for the PS1 and PS2.

I know! So many games, so little free time! And yes, you, Andrew, and John are aleady my friends on Switch.

I missed who else died in from the community :(

It's a new entry in the franchise. Apparently, there are others that never got locaalized to the West. I think it's also cross platform? So maybe if you do get it on XBox, we could play together.

Construction is done and we're back up to 80ish parking spaces.

Thanks. And I belong to Maine State Parks, not the NPS, so not affected by the current dystopia.

I have Hello Kitty Island Adventure on my wishlist.

I might have to try that picross adventure game.

I work for the state of Maine, so my job is safe.

There was a bug in Sunseed Island that caused the trees and rocks not to respawn after a while, so I deleted my first game and started over after they updated it. In my first play, I didn't realize about the bugs and artifacts, so when I had to start over, I kept one of every new thing. The other bug was that the mushrooms for each island were showing up on the wrong islands. I did think that it was odd that I was getting lava mushrooms on an ice island.

Have you played Bug & Seek yet? I keep meaning to ask you that. I think you'd like that one.

I hve the same feelings as you about spending the money on the Switch2. That's almost a month's rent for me, but I did just get my income tax refund, and I used to use that money to go visit my mom when she lived on the west coast, and now she lives two towns away, so I figured "why not?" As for Mario Kart, I've never really been into Mario Kart. It wasn't the bundle I would have chosen, but hey, not going to complain. I just don't know how much I'll actually play it. Personally, I'm hoping for a new Animal Crossing to come out soon. I finished my museum, have a bunch of really cool rooms, and only one of my friends still plays, they aren't updating with any new stuff, so I kind of wandered off, leaving my house to the cockroaches and my village to the weeds.

I have never owned a system at launch before, so this is a new experience, lol.

The bears in Cozy Grove are all ghosts, and you have to find out why they're stuck and can't move on, and you do that by doing quests for them to uncover their memories. I've got a blog post planned for later about cozy sims and I'll go into Cozy Grove in more depth.

About used books - check out Thriftbooks.com, I find a lot of books I'm looking for there.

My younger cousins, who are probably closer to your age than I am, used to watch all the Disney Afternoon cartoons, but I never really did. I caught a couple of episodes of each of them, but not enough to form any favorites.

I've also done a recent replay of Lego Marvel Superheroes. I gave my physical copy away to a friend who needed a good multiplayer game for her kids, and the Nintendo Store had a big sale, so I picked it up.I have a love/hate relationship with it. I find the flyng and driving controls to be horrible when it comes to doing the races, and that keeps me from getting 100% in the game.

Chrono Trigger was also ported to the PS1 as part of the Final Fantasy Chronicles two game collection, along with FF IV. Too bad we don't live closer, I'd loan you my DS copy.

I started back with my ranger job in April, so I didn't get much gaming in. I should really try and get back to Cat Quest.