Note: This is my second attempt to post this blog. My first attempt, the site ate everything after the introduction to Xanadu.
2000 was the year I started playing some live shows with my band in Philly and several other states. I had to upgrade all my gear for this and it cost me a pretty penny. I did some music on my own as well with a four track and a drum machine. It was music all the time that year, except when I saw, played or read the following.
A week in the life for me in '96: I delivered pizza for Domino's Pizza 'til 2am five days. I'd watch Mystery Science Theater 3000 til 4am or so. I might then get up early to do a 10-5 shift. Then on my days off, I'd play music in a basement in Philly with a few friends I met at a night school jam session. We started a blues band called Bad Tyming and then a punky rock band called Lemonloaf. When I wasn't jamming with them, I'd be at my friend Mark's place to play video games. We would go to flea markets and pick up cheap games and consoles. We had PCs, Atari 2600, NES, SNES, Genesis, PSOne and N64. I was also getting into various "cures" like health food, accupuncture and vitamins thanks to the influence of my girlfriend. I was 29.
I don’t know if it was because there was a Spring Sale, or if it was Golden Week in Japan, or maybe because of all the Coronavirus stuff. But there have been a BUNCH of games on sale lately. A few weeks ago, I got about five games on sale on PS4 for mostly less than ten bucks each! Most of them were arcade collections. Originally they were all 20 bucks, which isn’t THAT bad anyway. But I feel that digital only collections like this are still too pricey at that amount. If they were physical copies yeah I’d pay that. But since they were only digital I decided to wait for a sale. One of the games I got from that sale was the Capcom Beat ‘Em Up Bundle, which comes with seven arcade classic co-op side scrolling beat ‘em ups. There are also a bunch of neat artwork galleries in this game as well, plus you can save your games and even play them online! But since I like to talk about the games in these collections, let’s do that with this one. In the coming weeks I’ll talk about some of the other games I got on sale, too!
So we've just had E3, and the year is half over. We have the PS5 and the Xbox Scarlet on the horizon, as well as rumors of a Switch hardware revision. But there are a lot of games coming down the pipeline, including some games which finally havs a release date after God knows how many years. So here is what I'm looking forward to.
So it's been 90s week on my Switch this week. I got Turok a little over a week ago, and then I've also been playing a certain little known PS1 RPG that somehow just found its way onto a Nintendo console over 20 years later. And that got me thinking about the N64.
Part of being a gamer is picking your favorite Mega Man subseries and diving in. Some enjoy the simplicity of the classic series. Others want the story and exploration from the Legends series. Personally, I like the X series. Something about vanilla Mega Man never clicked with me, with X giving me just enough complexity without deviating from what makes the series work. Despite my love for Mega Man X, I never tried its sequels, so I was excited to see what they added to the formula.
Last week we looked at some games on the SEGA Genesis Classics collection out now on consoles. But there were so many games on this collection, that I had to split it into two parts! So here are the second half of the games found on this massive 16-bit collection. Do be sure and read the first part, too, if you haven’t already!
I'm sitting here waiting for fireworks. Immediately, of course, I think of a video game. This one is Rocket Mania. It's a fixed screen puzzle game I played way back in 2003 on PopCap.com. Reconnect the fuses as fast as you can and watch the fireworks. I just noticed there is a Deluxe version on Steam for download for $1.25. Yippie! But that's not all my droogs, I've been playing lots of other things too. Details!
I got two categories: current and retro. Retro will be media between the years '95-99. Here's the list.
I've been liking a lot of what Sega is doing these days, especially compared to their spotty track record of years past. We're now getting Yakuza games like clockwork, Valkyria Chronicles is getting a console sequel, they're bringing over a few other games that were stuck in Japan. Maybe it was the acquisition of Atlus and the success of Persona 5 that got Sega going.
I decided to go straight 5-year spans. I'm using this list for all media, not just games, so this will make it easier for music, film and books. Here's the revised list with consoles placed in the range where they released, not their life span. In playing the games, I'll stick to a console but play any game that came out for it regardless of release date.
I was like a vulture today swooping over the local mall, which didn't open in time before I had to go to work, and landing for a quick peck at the dying Toys R Us, which still isn't running a clearance sale, even though they could close any day now. It's just as well, I've been well fed this past week anyway. Over fed, really.
