PixlBit

Posted on 12/30/2020 at 12:04 PM | Filed Under Blogs

2020 was kind of a lackluster year this year, but I still found plenty to play. I played a lot of Animal Crossing, but my favorite game released this year was actually Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition, which gave my favorite Wii game of all time a facelift, an audio lift, and extra content.

Boulder Dash was a golden oldie I played on the Atari 130XE, which is the platform the game was originally developed on and the version which had the best graphics and sound.

My dad built one of those Heathkit TVs. I remember him doing it, too. When he got the electronics part put together, he got busy at work, so he put the TV on a bookshelf stand until he could find time to finish building the wooden TV console. So for awhile we were watching TV on a bare picture tube with all the electronics exposed. I was four years old and it's a wonder I didn't electrocute myself messing with it, but I think my parents put the fear of God in me about touching the exposed parts. He eventually did finish the console. The TV only lasted a few years before the tube went out. My dad tried to fix the TV, but never could find the parts to get it right, so they bought a more modern TV and put it up in his workshop where he still has it. I think it does have a picture but it's very washed out. My sister had an off-brand Pong machine. My big Christmas gift to myself, incidentally, was a 65 inch Sony 4K TV that was on sale at Best Buy. Really makes movies and games look good, even on the Switch.

Posted on 12/28/2020 at 01:54 PM | Filed Under Blogs

You never do see a lot of Santa Claus games. I had one in the 80s for my Atari computer called Special Delivery, which had a flying sleigh sequence where you had to catch presents dropped by angels and avoid mountains, trees, lightning, and evil presents dropped by red angels (who were ostensibly devils.) Then you had to deliver the presents without being caught by kids.

The only Santa Claus I remember seeing on the SNES was the one in Secret of Mana.

Posted on 12/14/2020 at 11:54 PM | Filed Under Blogs

Sorry to hear about your mom. Here's hoping she will have a speedy and complete recovery, and make sure you take care of yourself as well.

For Christmas, I'd give you one of those old Pac-Man candy mazes from the early 80s. My mom got me one when we were on my first car trip, from Arizona to San Diego, when I was 5. The Pac-Man candies were like SweeTarts or Smarties (the US version, not the UK kind that look like M&Ms).

Posted on 12/07/2020 at 11:45 PM | Filed Under Blogs

Hard to believe we're going into yet another console cycle. When the gang migrated over here, it was 2013 and Ni no Kuni was my big game of the year.

My favorite PS4 games were Final Fantasy XV, FF Type-0, Yakuza 0, Sakura Wars, and Fallout 4. Nights of Azure was a fun little gem as well. for me, the Switch was where the good gaming action was, and since I got mine, that's what I've been focusing on. 

Posted on 12/07/2020 at 11:40 PM | Filed Under Blogs

This year I've watched Ratched and Peaky Blinders, and High Score. Also got a new season of F is for Family.

Gaming, been doing Animal Crossing, Xenoblade Chronicles Remastered, Pokemon Sword, and Trails of Cold Steel. 

Posted on 12/05/2020 at 05:22 AM | Filed Under Blogs

I had this when I was a teenager and was obsessed with it. I loved SimCity. I kind of wish I'd gotten the NES version so I could see the origins of Mr. Write in Link's Awakening. The next year my parents got me SimAnt for Christmas, which was also fun.  But I was also frustrated because I couldn't get my city's population higher than 250,000, which is about the size of Scottsdale or Glendale. My dreams of building a Tokyo-sized megalopolis never came to pass.

I didn't play a Sim game again until I picked up the PS2 version of The Sims, and in 2005 I got a laptop and got SimCity 4 for it. After that Maxis and EA went downhill. But I got Cities Skylines on the Switch a couple of years ago, and it's tied with Pokemon Sword as my second most played Switch game, behind Breath of the Wild. Cities Skylines handles traffic much better than SimCity ever did, although I seem to have ambulances everywhere on my city's freeways for some reason. And despite the fact that the city I built looks like downtown Los Angeles, its population has topped out at 170,000, about the size of Tempe. But it's still the best city sim out there these days.

Posted on 12/05/2020 at 05:15 AM | Filed Under Blogs

Cities Skylines is a game to try. It's the best city sim out there these days, especially since EA killed Maxis and SimCity with the 5th game.

Posted on 12/04/2020 at 05:24 PM | Filed Under Blogs

The run button probably came from Final Fantasy, where you held the shoulder buttons to run away starting on the SNES. I guess it's lucky Yakuza 7 doesn't take its dying penalty from Fire Emblem (permadeath). 

Posted on 12/04/2020 at 05:22 PM | Filed Under Blogs

Moviewise, mostly Marvel flicks with the GF and her kids. We did watch A Quiet Place as well.

Gamingwise, 2019 was great, and September 2019 was more jam-packed than some whole YEARS. September 2019 brought Dragon Quest XI S, Link's Awakening, Ni no Kuni, and Astral Chain. It started out with FF8 finally getting released for current systems including the Switch, and with a graphical facelift (there were plenty of memes about Squall's originally pixellated face during the dance sequence.) A couple of months earlier was another amazing game, Fire Emblem: Three Houses, and that one I managed to snatch up the last collector's edition at my local Best Buy.

Posted on 12/04/2020 at 04:55 PM | Filed Under Blogs

64 is still my favorite Mario game. It was, and is, still fun to run and jump in, and I liked the sandbox lite aspect of its design.

Galaxy still looks really nice on a Switch, and I liked how they brought back some classic power-ups from 2-D Mario like the fire flowers, even though those were limited to context-specific situations. 

Sunshine is an odd beast. I skipped buying it on Gamecube, as I was more interested in Wind Waker, but I did play it at kiosks. It was definitely an experimental title, but I think it is better than its original reception indicated. 

Man, I hope Nintendo has a Zelda collection in mind for next year when rhat series celebrates its 35th anniversary in Japan.