Ramen Junkie

Sunday 2025-01-05 – Link List

by Ramen Junkie.

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Lameazoid Link List for Sunday 2025-01-05

01-Jan-2025 – Sonic Advance

Brief Summary: ”

Following the Dreamcast’s discontinuation in 2001, Sega pulled out of the hardware market and st”

31-Dec-2024 – Fan Made Dreamcast Port of GTA 3 Steals The Show

Brief Summary: “As it turns out, Sega’s long defunct Dreamcast console is still thinking. The company behind the mac”

28-Dec-2024 – Porting Dragon’s Lair to the Game Boy Color Was a Technical Triumph

Brief Summary: “If you remember the 80s arcade game Dragon’s Lair, you probably also remember it was strikingly unli”

23-Dec-2024 – Tokyo’s Super Mario Christmas decoration displays are super cool【Photos】

Brief Summary: ”
We head to a powered-up Marunouchi to soak in the Nintendo-themed Christmas cheer.

When you stop a”

16-Dec-2024 – Documented Source Code for Elite on the C64, BBC Micro and Others

Brief Summary: “If you ever wanted to dive into the source code for the 1980s space game Elite, but didn’t want to i”

12-Dec-2024 – Pokémon TCG Pocket’s new expansion drops next week

Brief Summary: ”

The Pokémon Company

If you’ve been playing Pokémon TCG Pocket since launch, “

10-Dec-2024 – G.I. Joe in the Cereal Bowl

Brief Summary: “A Cursory Glance at Sixty Years of United States History Through the Medium of G.I. Joe Toy Photogra”

09-Dec-2024 – Lego Fortnite is getting a big expansion with a GTA-style roleplaying city

Brief Summary: ”

Image: Epic Games

Lego is building something new in Fortnite. A year after L”

09-Dec-2024 – Infinity Nikki has topped 10m downloads in just four days

Brief Summary: ” UPDATE 15/12/24: Infinity Nikki has been downloaded 20 million times. Read more”

Kazinga

Jan 3rd, 2025

by Ramen Junkie.

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Over the New Years holiday, after a failed attempt at Tripoley, we switched to a game called Kazinga. Funny enough, like Tripoley, it also uses chips, though not for betting. Thats about the extent of the similarities though.

The game it primarily about dice rolling, though there are some additional bonus cards each player has to use as well. At the start of each game, each player is distributed a number of different colored chips and 3 bonus cards. The object, in the general sense, is to collect, or to get rid of all chips of a single color. There are half a dozen or so variations of play in the instructions. We played 2 variations, collect all chips of a single color, and collect all chips of a single color, without having any other chips. Other versions involve getting rid of all chips of two colors, trying to give all chips pf one color to a pre designated player, and a team variation of the basic collect chips game play. The game is made for 2-6 players and one round takes around 15-30 minutes depending on how well you play.

The chips move around by rolling dice, which gives a number of chips, 1, 2, or 3, and what to do with them, give or take from another player or the central pot. There are also some special cards that can be played each round, though the number of cards each player has is pretty limited. Also, some of the cards sound really useful, but the use case is a bit dubious. The cards are a good idea, but it feels like a game mechanic that could use some work. I feel like if there was some sort of mechanic to replenish your cards, they would be more useful. It also feels like it would be easy to end up in a sort of, stalemate situation, where nothing really changes, and everyone is put of cards.

There is a fair amount of strategy for each game, both in how you collect chips and how you deny chips to other players. There is one particularly powerful card that lets you trade an entire stack of chips of one color for your chips of another color, which can be extra tricky if played right, since you could potentially gain an entire stack of all one color even when you just have 1 or 2 of that color. Another strategy (that I got yelled at for doing), is to just stack and mix your chips up by color. It makes it hard to tell what you have a lot of easily.

Everyone really enjoyed playing the game overall though. Especially once we kind of got the hang of things a bit.

What I’ve Been Playing – Mobile Pixel Games Edition

Dec 7th, 2024

by Ramen Junkie.

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Things have been really heavily mobile gaming focused lately. I suppose its also worth mentioning, sometimes, often times, there are games that I don’t mention at all. Like when I spent ten minutes on some Steam game that was meh. Or the CAT CEO game I played for like, a day.

Games I am omitting this week because I barely played them…

A Godzilla Racing game.
Oregon Trail
Infinity Nikki
Unreal Life
Fortnite
That Cat CEO game
LinkedIn’s Daily Puzzle games
Sky: CotL

Loop Hero

I decided to dig a bit into what was available on Play Pass, since I pay for it, and use it, but could use it more. This is one I picked up there.

Its sort of an, auto playing RPG, though you do have to manage gear and planning out the map. Your character just walks around a looped path, and every round the enemies get harder. But you also get cards that you can play across the map to add power ups and harder enemies for better drops. Each loop you have the option to return to camp with your loot, though each loop resets everything.

Hence, Loop, Hero.

Its fun, I am starting to get some better strategies going for item placement and which stats are the best.

Balatro

I actually just bought this one, after a friend recommended it. It actually kind of reminds me of the sort of, gradual, subtle strategy, of Loop Hero, though way more cards.

You get dealt a number of cards (8 I think by default) and have to make Poker hands from them to tey to score points and beat the blind everytime. The trick is, the blind keeps going up and you need to upgrade points for hand types (Flush, Full House, etc), and use an assortment of Joker cards to beef up your combos and points.

I have a few good strategies but I have yet to make it past round 6/8, yet.

Like Loop Hero, every round you gain a few new unlocks, but everything resets otherwise.

Pokemon TCG Pocket

I am still… Diligently opening packs twice a day. I don’t like playing against people and the Expert AI opponents are cheap as hell impossible.

I kind of want to finish the set of cards, but I am not sure I will bother.

Throne and Liberty

I have almost completely stopped playing T&L. I could feel it coming, and it followed the usual pattern of, “I feel my interest waning” followed by “Lets push and play extra” after. Then Thanksgiving week was busy and I just sort of, stopped. I did all the available dungeons, I did all the quests, now its just, a repetitive gear grind. I can’t even transmog items to play dress up like in WoW, not without paying money. I feel like I have worn the same armor for 90% of the game now.

Beatstar

Another, “I can tell I am losing interest. I want to enjoy it more but its just, very repetitious. And I either instantly ace new song unlocks, or its an extreme tier track that I lose in Stage 2 at 10,000 points because hit detection on swipes is pretty ass for a game entirely built around hit detection.