PixlBit

This weekend was full of distractions from gaming: Easter Sunday with family, my friend Mark needed to be taken for new glasses (he's in a wheelchair), and I getting over a cold that I got from my first day in the gym last Thursday. But I managed to sneak in some short burst of gaming and then a longer session Monday evening. Oh, and I even picked up a few games. I juggled a lot of stuff this week, here's the breakdown.

1. Mii Plaza: I've been wrangling Miis all week. So many, in fact, that I crashed my system when I got the "Greet Miis on 10 consecutive days" Accomplishment. All I've been doing is stopping at McDonalds on my way to things and going to malls on Friday and Saturday looking for games and music. With all these MIis, I still haven't beaten the main quest in Monster Manor or Warrior's Way yet. 

2. The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages: After Easter festivities I had some time by myself at home so I decided to see if Oracle of Ages was on the 3DS eShop. It was. I have the original Game Boy Color cart but I thought it might be better on my 3DS with a brighter and bigger screen. It was $5.99 and yes, it looks just great on 3DS. I played about an hour or two of it. What a fantastic game! I love the time travel element and all the little mysteries you have to solve by moving things, finding items for people, and getting tools that let you access new areas.

3. New/Old TV at home: I was thinking of gettting a new TV for the current gen systems I will likely have by the end of this year, but I had a feeling I'd find an old one for free that would at least let me play my older stuff for a while and let me postpone this costly purchase. Sure enough, an old CRT TV appeared in my trash room with a sign saying, "still works". I grabbed it and now I can hook up my N64 to play some Super Mario 64 on it. Current gen will have to wait. I got classics to play!

4. Pokemon Shuffle and Pickups: I had to go to the mall on Monday with Mark to get him new glasses. He's in a wheelchair and it took a while for him to get a checkup and new prescriptions. While I waited, I played some Pokemon Shuffle and watched the Miis roll in to fill up my street passes. I saw these two Asian kids playing Minecraft on their smart phones. Then I saw a preteen boy walking through the mall with a tablet and headphones playing, you guessed it, Minecraft again. This just hit home the fact that kids these days are on phones and tablets and not dedicated gaming machines like 3DS or Vita. I did get my street passes though, so some people had them, I just never saw anybody playing a 3DS.

             

After all that we finally got to stop at a retro video game store and I picked up Halo: Combat Evolved ($9) and Top Spin ($2). I figure getting Halo 1 and 2 (I'll get 2 later this week) will keep me from buying an Xbox One a little longer. Plus, I'm kind of curious to see this game on the original system again after having played the Anniversary Edition on 360 a while ago. And it should be in my Xbox collection again anyway. Top Spin is by the same devs that made Links 2004, so I wanted to see how they did a tennis game. It should be great just like Links was.

5. GTA San Andreas: So when Mark and I finally got back to his place, it was 5pm on Monday and I quickly turned on my 360 and started the download of GTA: San Andreas which I bought some weeks ago. My intention was to go into the game and look for a golf course because Mark was playing Links 2004. I thought it'd be funny to play golf in GTA while Mark was playing Links. Well, the download was taking a while (it was 2GB) so I turned on my Original Xbox and popped in a game I quickly couldn't stop playing - mentioned next.

6. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic: I put this in while waiting for San Andreas to download and couldn't stop playing it. What an awesome game! I got to the Undercity part when I had to stop for the night. I've never finished more than half of this game and now I intend to finish it. One thing I noticed. What are clearly side missions don't feel like side missions. Sometimes you don't know what to do next, so you just talk to people until some mission appears, then you just inevitably stumble onto the main quest. Even then, you will come across new characters that don't seem to be involved in the main story, but they always end up havning something to do with it. All the missions seem really well integrated into the world you're investigating and tie in to other missions in unexpected ways. Sometimes I feel lost, but I know that if I keep doing things, I'll figure it out eventually. All the dialog is interesting and every character stands out and begs to be questioned further for their back story. I really can't say enough about this game. Once I started, I couldn't stop. And I know the twist in this game already but it doesn't matter! Everything you do is interesting. Anyway, I'll be deep into this game in the coming weeks. I really want to finish it this time. 

And that's the weekend. This week will see me hit the gym a lot and be sore a lot, but I should be able to get some Super Mario 64 in on my new free TV. I've played this game before, but didn't get very far. I'm going to give it a harder try this time. Oh, I tried to see if it was on the 3DS eshop but apparently it's only available on the Wii-U eShop. Well, I'll have one of those systems this year for sure. I've got Bayonetta 2 on my mind lately. Oh sweet heavenly gun-shoes.