Video Games

My Gaming Journey – Part 3 – 32/64bit Era

This era of gaming is where things started to get a little more varied. This would essentially be the Playstation/Saturn/N64 era of gaming. Though I am not sure I have ever even seen a Saturn, much less played one. Playstation definitely dominated this era of games, but for my part, I stuck with Nintendo. I also started really pushing into PC gaming as well, but I covered all my PC history last year.

The Nintendo 64 was the first console I bought with my own money. I was working by this time, and had plenty of free flowing cash. I forget exactly which store I bought it from, but I can say I got a branded carry bad for free when I bought it. The first game I got for it was Cruisin’ USA. I had been playing a lot of Cruisin’ USA at the arcade and wanted to be able to play it at home too, which I did, a lot.

I imagine the system also included Mario 64. Some of the notable titles I remember really enjoying for the N64 included

Cruisin’ USA
Mario 64
Mario Kart 64
Mischief Makers
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Goldeneye

Man, Goldeneye was such a great classic game. It looks pretty janky these days with its blocky polygons, but it was so fun both single player and multi player.

But more notable maybe is Mischief Makers. I played the original, and it’s probably my favorite game on the system, but later I picked up a Japanese copy for fairly cheap while off at college along with a Japanese Dance Dance Revolution Disney Mix. These are notable if only because they were the first time I actually “modded” a console in any way. Granted, it’s an easy mod. Nintendo games are region free, but the carts are shaped differently. The US consoles have these notches inside to prevent inserting Japanese carts. I could modify the carts, or modify the system, since I had two cartridges, it made sense to just chop the tabs out of the slot in the system.

I also wrote a GameFAQs FAQ for that Disney Mix game, it may still be the only FAQ for that game.

I don’t remember owning a PS1 until later, I want to say I did most of my Playstation 1 gaming on the PS2, which I will get to next post. My friend had a Playstation though, so we played it some there. Most notably, there was a weekend where I borrowed it though, he was out of town, my parents and brother were out of town, I had the whole place to myself, because I had to work. But when I wasn’t at work, I played through a very large chunk of Final Fantasy VII.

I didn’t have time to finish it sadly, not on the Playstation. Eventually I got a copy for the PC, and played through it there. In case you are unaware, Final Fantasy VII is highly regulated by gamers as one of the greatest games ever made. And it definitely had me hooked.

I am sure I played a lot of other PS1 titles, but I can’t really remember many besides Metal Gear Solid and Mega Man Legends. I kind of just skipped the PS1 Generation in a way, though I did play catch up a bit later.

Unfortunately for Nintendo, this would be the last console I would own from them for a while. I got way more into PC gaming and went with the PS2 and Dreamcast during the follow up generation, but that’s for next week’s post.

My Gaming Journey – Part 1 – 8-Bit Era

Aug 4th, 2024

by Ramen Junkie.

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Last year when I did Blaugust over on [BI], I dis a series of posts about my history of computer use. I wasn’t really going to try to go all “hardcore” at posting this year, but I decided it might be fun to try to parallel that series a bit with a history of my Video Game memories.

Also, I have no idea if these are all 8-bit systems, it’s just an easy way to segment things, don’t @ me.

Like my computer use, I’ve played video games, essentially my entire life. I’ve played a lot of games. My god it’s a lot. I covered some of the PC based gaming in the other series, so I’m going to stick more to consoles for this series, at least for a while. also the break points are a bit fuzzy because I generally just, keep playing games on every system. I have the same SNES and Genesis hooked up to my TV today that I had when I was a kid. I still own my original NES. I have all of the same carts too.

My gaming journey started earlier than that a bit, with the Commodore 64 and the Atari 2600/7800. I don’t recall my family ever owning an Atari, my friend had a 7800, I think my grandparents had a 2600. I never really understood the difference, I just knew that, for the most part, the games for one worked on another. My favorite games on the Atari included River Raid, Chopper Command, and the Olympic Winter Games. River Raid was my favorite, it is essentially an early top town shooter, you control a little jet flying through a ravine avoiding the walls and enemy boats. There was also a fuel gimmick where you had to pass over fuel cells to refuel. It helped a lot to hold down and slow down.

The Commodore 64 made up a lot of my early gaming as well. We played a lot of Park Patrol and Ghostbusters, even though I never understood how to actually accomplish anything in Ghostbusters. It was still cool because Ghostbusters! Park Patrol was just silly. You were a park ranger who had to wander around rescuing drowning swimmers and avoiding turtles and snakes.

The real gaming adventure started when my grandparents bought my brother and I a NES for Christmas one year. I’m not sure the NES was technically better than the other options, but it certainly FELT better. And it only got better over time. This is the system that basically created my real love for games, starting with that classic Super Mario Brothers. My friends all had a NES as well, and we often traded titles. And between the three of us, we had and played a lot of games, both single and multiplayer.

Notable titles, off the top of my head.

Super Mario Brothers 1,2, and 3
River City Ransom
Final Fantasy
Ivan “Ironman” Stewart’s Super Off Road
The Legend of Zelda
RBI Baseball
Willow
Contra
Life Force
Dragon Warrior
Mega Man 3
Tecmo Super Bowl
Chip N Dale’s Rescue Rangers

I also had an NES Advantage controller as well. I absolutely loved that controller. For those unfamiliar, the NES Advantage was a large flat arcade sticks style controller, that included optional turbo button toggles. These turbo buttons were an absolute blast in Super Off Road. We would play for a while building up Nitro Boosts until reaching 99, the max you could carry. Then turn ont he turbo and jet around the track super fast. It was amazing.

Probably the game I most obsessed over was Final Fantasy. I never did beat it when I was younger, but my friends and I absolutely loved this game and we played it all the time. I also had a strategy guide from Nintendo Power that I obsessed over and probably memorized. It’s an obsession that would last for a very long time as well, Final Fantasy will definitely come up again in future installments of this series.

Speaking of Nintendo Power, that was another long term love developed from this era. I started on Issue 20, with the Mega Man 3 issue, the first to feature a square binding instead of a round binding. I would eagerly anticipate the arrival of every issue. Before the internet, this was how you got news about new games coming out. And the only way to get tips and maps and guides for games. Today you can just search and get it all, but when I was a kid, you had to really hope they would cover the game you were playing at some point. And sometimes, it wasn’t the featured game, it would just get maybe half a page of hints, without any maps.

I just want to close out this era with a nod towards the Sega Master System. One of my friends has a Master System, we never played it much, and I don’t remember anything about it other than if you turned it on without inserting a game, it would load a Snail Maze game. Which was kind of neat.

What I’ve Been Playing – Boring Gamer Edition

Aug 3rd, 2024

by Ramen Junkie.

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I wish it were more exciting this week, but it’s kind of more of the same. I’m admittedly in a bit of a rut in my gaming lately.

Overwatch

I almost wasn’t playing this anymore, again. It’s starting to reach a point where it’s more frustrating than fun again. Last weekend had a trial round for the upcoming new hero Juno (maybe it was two weekends ago?). Juno seems, a little lame honestly. She is a healer, but it kind of feels like an “easy mode” style healer. She doesn’t need to toggle between healing and damage, so you can just “shoot shoot shoot” But she seems really really weak. Like, her health is too low and her output for damage is super low. I didn’t get any real matches with her though aside from a few No Limits matches, which were almost exclusively 6v6 Juno, because everyone wants to try Juno.

This D.Va has nothing to do with anything, I just didn’t have any other non scoreboard screen shots from recent games.

The real tragedy of Juno’s release will be poor Venture. Venture was the last hero released, an they are a lot of fun to play and I just, generally enjoy them as a character. Juno falls into the same “cute Asian girl” category like D.Va and Kiriko which will make her extremely popular, instantly. Venture is a non binary person in a giant coat who eats dirt and rocks for fun. The point here is, I want more and better skins for Venture, who basically has nothing outside of a few recolors. Juno will probably get like 5 legendary skins right out the gate, because, she will be real popular for that.

Juno aside, I’ve long since finished this round’s base level battle pass. It was all Tokusatsu themed with a mix of Kaiju and Karate Bugman style skins, several for heroes I didn’t have any good skins for (Mauga, Soujorn) which was nice as well. All that is left is the Player Titles, which aren’t anything to cry over if I don’t get them, but the level 200 “Final Boss” title is kind of neat.

Sky: Children of the Light

It feels like the folks at ThatGameCompany has realized they have a popular game, but it needs more variety of activities to keep people interested. We had the Season of Nesting adding player housing, Now we have the Season of Duets with emphasis on the music aspects. I am a bit disappointed, not with Sky, but because I backed a Kickstarter recently for a little bluetooth keyboard deal that is supposed to be Sky compatible. That isn’t the only reason I wanted it, but it was one of them and it hasn’t come in yet. I mean, it hasn’t been very long, so I shouldn’t really be impatient, but it would have been cool to have for the music season of the game.

But also, right now there is an Olympics themed “Days of” style event. I’m not sure the official name. Each player was randomly assigned to one of 4 teams for 4 of the realms, Prairie, Forest, Wasteland, and Valley. Players can do a pair of mini games each day and compete with each other team for points. I don’t think there is an overall prize of any kind, but each day the highest point scoring team wins medals.

I ended up on the Forest Team. Which is fun because well, Forest is dominating the standings. They have won both Gold Medals every day so far. I almost feel bad. Especially because I am super bad at the daily games, i always come in last. It’s still a nice change of pace from the usual Days of Events where you just, go to an area and pick up 4 event currencies. It’s kind of nice to have to actually DO something.

Doom 3

I did branch out slightly, with Doom 3. I played through Quake II recently and have kind of been wanting to play something similar to that. The Doom series kind of felt like a logical place to move to, being the sort of, precursor series to Quake. I have never played Doom 3 so I decided to give it a go.

I’m… not really enjoying it. I’m really not into “Zombie games” and Doom 3 seems to very much be a zombie game. Also, everything is so fucking dark. God it’s so dark, why is it so dark? There is a flashlight, but it has a battery mechanic, which mostly feels meaningless since you can just, turn ti back on. It’s not like you have to find energy cells. It’s like someone realized it was all too dar, and instead of beefing up the lighting, they just added a shitty flashlight.

I played it, I’m not sure I’ll go back to it. Also, these models are kind of ugly.

American Truck Simulator

I’m almost caught up on my mission to visit every city for the DLC that I own. I’ve also started working on some of the other achievements in the game. A while back I started obsessing a bit with 100% completing achievements, and I could definitely see doing that for ATS over time. I’ve been playing it while watching through Star Trek Lower Decks. It’s a good sort of game for that, since it doesn’t require a lot of attention at times. Though sometimes I definitely don’t give it enough attention because I’ve gotten into more than a few accidents because I forgot to watch the traffic.

Something something don’t stream and drive people! Unless it’s a virtual truck, then it really doesn’t matter.

Sky Children of the Light 5th Anniversary

Jul 27th, 2024

by Ramen Junkie.

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With the 5th Anniversary even now closed out, I wanted to take a moment to share some random shots and comments on the various activities.

I didn’t spend as much time in the game doing things as I feel like I should have, but also, it was a bit chaotic, which kind of feels like a regular problem for some of these events. I did not realize until last minute that the portals took you to the special gallery areas. I think for the most part, I managed to catch everything at least once. There were the two wireframe galleries, a sort of fancy dancing area on top of the Office zone, a giant video screen viewing area, and regular events in the Aviary itself.

Probably the most interesting but was the two gallery areas. One in Isle of Dawn and one in the Forest. You explored through each zone viewing commentary and images. The neat part was that both had a modified display so everything was a sort of wireframe look.

There was a special cape you could buy that would allow you to return to these zones later. I considered it but decided not to get the cape.

The Isle of Dawn zone was a sort of, history of ThatGameCompany and the lead up of decisions to creating Sky: Children of the Light.

The Forest zone was the same idea, except it was a behind-the-scenes look at the history of Sky.

The Dance zone was neat but I don’t socialize enough to have really taken advantage of the area. This was where the vendor for the limited cosmetics was located though so I went there pretty regularly. The cosmetics were, ok, I doubt I use most of them. The nest decor was the better stuff overall, there was a cool Disco Ball thing for some heart currency.

The cooler thing from the Dance zone was that they had all of the previous special capes available for use so anyone could access the various special zones. I got to visit a few areas for the first and maybe only time. I did not revisit the Aurora Concert using the Aurora Wings nor did I visit the Nine Colored Deer.

I did visit the others. First was the Little Prince Moon. This season happened before I played Sky at all, and had some nice looking items I missed. This includes a cape that would allow you to visit a small area inspired by the story. It’s a small planet, like in the story, which has a small biplane. Several Sky Kids can sit on the plane and eventually, it launches and flies around past various other views and things to see.

The second, and one I might eventually buy except I don’t own a Switch, is the Nintendo Area. Accessible via a warp pipe prop. The neat part of this zone is that it is locked to a 2D view, like a Mario game. The zone actually serves as a home hub with portals to each of the places in Sky similar to Home and Aviary. There is also a little underground area that is designed like a mini Mario level with moving platforms and coin blocks that spit fireworks and butterflies.

Back on other actual anniversary activities, one was a schedule of videos from the designers in a large viewing area. I kind of watched a few of these but personally, I feel just watching a YouTube video would be a better format for this.

Lastly there were a bunch of activities in Home, some group games, occasionally giant Oreo dogs would take over, and a fireworks display.

What I’ve Been Playing – Cruisn’ the USA Edition

Jul 13th, 2024

by Ramen Junkie.

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It’s been a while since I posted about “What I’m Playing”. I’ve done a few specific game posts but no generic ones. Mostly it’s been Overwatch. Because I stopped playing Fortnite and apparently I hate myself because I can’t NOT play a grindy shooter game. I’m probably not going to really talk about Overwatch. I’ve finished the base Ultrawatch Pass already, helped out because I bought the Ultimate pass like a sucker because it had Kaiju skins, but it had 20-level tier skips. I still have titles to try for, which is another 100 levels. I also spent my Mythic Coins on the base Rita Repulsa Ashe skin. I probably won’t bother with the upgrades, and I have a ton of Mythic currency still because I skipped the Evil Mercy.

I have plenty of good Mercy Skins.

I said I wasn’t going to talk Overwatch, yet, here I am.

American Truck Simulator

In an effort to not play so much Overwatch, I’ve gone back to the American Truck Simulator Well. I tried the Elite Dangerous (Space Trucking Simulator) route but I have forgotten all the controls. I’ll get there. Instead, I’ve been actively working to visit every city in all the DLC I have. Also other achievements. I often use this time to watch some TV my wife isn’t interested in as well, or Youtube videos. It’s just generally a very chill game.

I have a LOT of the state DLCs too. I will eventually get them all, but I decided I should actually travel around the ones I have before buying more. What I really want is my own home state of Illinois. And they are getting close. I think Iowa and/or Missouri are next. I can’t see them pushing Illinois after that though. Probably it will be Minnesota or the Dakotas. I actually wouldn’t mind if they took the “American: part more seriously and added Canadian Provinces and Mexico at some point.

I really want Illinoi though. If only to get a feel for just how much it “feels right” to get an idea of how much the rest of the game “would feel right”. All of the states so far are west of the Mississippi river. I’ve been to almost every state East of the Mississippi, and a few West, but none that have been released so far.

I need some context man!

Anyway, I mix between long and short trips depending on my free time. I’ve gotten good enough at parking I almost always take the “hard parking” option for the bonus XP.

I did recently disable traffic fines in the options. I still drive safely, because it’s more enjoyable. But sometimes the red lights are just a little too long and you can’t make right turns on red at all without triggering a fine. Plus I can be a little more floaty with my speed without worrying about a speeding ticket for 2 MPH over. Basically, I still play the “right way”, but I don’t have to stress about it.

Also sometimes, just for fun, I can now just, absolutely blast if at full speed and barrel down the shoulder and blast through cars at the intersection. Which is sometimes fun.

X-Box 360

This is a bit of a blanket category. I’ve been playing a few X-Box 360 games. Off the top of my head, 1942: join Strike, Wing Commander Arena, a few others. I’ve been picking up some titles cheap because the 360 marketplace is closing at the end of the month. Another round of sales drops in a few weeks just before closing. I’m hoping the Saints Row 1 and 2 games go cheap, but I may pick them up anyway.

So far I’ve picked up, but not necessarily played:

Mighty No 9 – Made by the Mega Man creator, though I hear it’s meh
1942: Joint Strike – A lot of neat shooters on the 360 right now for like $1.
Bionic Commando Re:armed – I have this on PC but the platformer seemed good for 360. I want to get the sequel but the store keeps bugging on me.
Frogger Hyper Arcade – Seeing a trend yet, it’s all mostly cheap arcade titles, because i have most everything else on PC.
Wing Commander Arena – An arena based space shooter that is 360 exclusive in a favored franchaise.
Geon – a neat looking puzzle game
Kane and Lynch: Dead Men – I think this one is 360 exclusive maybe, but it was cheap
Star Raiders – Another shooter
Ziet^2 – Another shooter
Yar’s Revenge – An update of the classic Atari title
War World – It looked neat and was cheap
Dogfight 1942 – Another shooter

I still want to get a few more, Saints Row 1 and 2 hopefully. I keep hoping the 360 version of Minecraft goes on sale. I have a wish list of maybes. This also fits nicely in my recent push to update my console set up and use it more as well.