PixlBit

Season's warnings, PixlBit community! I thought I'd bestir myself and write a quick blog.

What I've been doing: As some of you may know, my dad ended up in the hospital in Phoenix, so I grabbed a couple of planes from BWI and Sky Harbor and went back to see him. Other than a brief visit with my sister in New York City last year, I haven't seen my family since I came to Maryland. My dad is finally making a slow recovery after a few really anxious moments I really missed my family a lot, and it was fun catching up, for all our worries about my dad. We went to Rustler's Rooste, a steakhouse built on top of a mountain in south Phoenix that gives you a view of the entire Valley, which was an occasional family treat when I was a little kid. One thing about Maryland is that steak and barbecue, two of my favorite foods, are both in distressingly short supply.

The trip also made me realize that I was homesick for the West, so I also took the time to see old familiar places while I was there. I made a couple of trips to Fallout Games but didn't buy anything. If you're ever in Arizona, Fallout Games (3 locations in the Valley) is the best game store I've ever seen. They have so many rare games and a lot of really obscure old systems like the Odyssey, the Fairchild Channel F, and old computers that played a lot of games back in the day.

What I've been playing: Dragon Quest VII. I have the PS1 version of this game, but the DS remake, in addition to the graphical upgrade, streamlines some of the more onerous parts of the game at the beginning. Though Dragon Quest VIII and DQV remain my favorites out of that series, I'm really having a good time with DQVII and my 3DS is getting a lot of playtime. I hope they bring this remake to a full-size console at some point.

The 7th Dragon III Code: VFD - still chipping away at that one.

Atari Arcade Classics: I'm a sucker for old arcade games, and this collection has both Atari arcade favorites and 2600 classics like Yars' Revenge, though still no Solaris (which is owned by its author, Doug Neubauer), and no Battlezone, since Atari is still selling assets piecemeal to raise cash. My favorite Atari arcade games are Centipede and Millipede, which combine the progressive descent of Space Invaders with the constant dive-bombing of Galaxian and Galaga. And of course, those damn spiders that force you to split your attention between the top of the screen and the bottom of the screen. Whoever designed those games was a brilliant sadist.

Tokyo Mirage Sessions: Kind of let that game go for a bit, but picked it back up. I haven't gotten Final Fantasy XV yet, but so far this is a contender for GOTY for me, especially since we're not getting Persona 5.

Trails of Cold Steel II: Picked it up, haven't actually started playing it. I still haven't finished ToCS I.

Sakura Wars: So Long My Love: Along with Valkyria Chronicles and Final Fantasy Tactics this is my favorite SRPG. I actually have the PS2 collectors' edition, but as I have no console to play it on, I located a copy of the Wii version in a Gamestop near DC, which I can play on my Wii U. Still a great game, and I still wish they'd brought the other games to the US.

TRS-80 Emulator: Remember the TRS-80 I blogged about a few blogs back? No, didn't think so. Anyway, I downloaded an emulator for the TRS-80 and got it running on my computer after a bit of tinkering, so now I can play all the classic knockoffs of popular arcade games I enjoyed back before a lot of you were born, in all their monochromatic glory: Penetrator (a Scramble knockoff that's actually pretty good), Spooks (Pac-Man knockoff), Hopper (Frogger knockoff), Olympic Decathlon (a game written by a very young Microsoft), Caterpillar (Centipede knockoff), Galaxy Invasion (a good Galaxian/Galaga type game), and Bee Wary, where you're a bee fighting a spider. and a chess program. I know it's kind of dumb messing around with this old digital bric-a-brac, but I think it's cool that I got it working on my computer, especially since you usually have to hunt around on the Internet for everything you need to make these things work. If anybody knows some good cheap video capture software I might make videos of these games for my YouTube channel.

Anyway, thanks for reading. In honor of the holiday, here's one of my favorite Xmas songs.

trinity going to war from kukl farun on Vimeo.