Alongside gaming, my gaming buddy and I watch some cheesy TV. Last month it was Thunderbirds, and right now it's Ultraman Returns, the 1970s Japanese TV show that revived the Kaiju craze in Japan. The show is in subtitles, but it is really fun. Just like Thunderbirds, there are tons of real model sets, vehicles and planes for the special effects. And then there are the wrestling matches between Ultraman and the Kaiju of the day. Each episode shows off another kaiju, and the Blue-Ray collection has a Kaiju Roll Call booklet. Here's the first batch we been watching.
As for gaming, this is my setup for now:
70s gaming:
Pinballl Hall of Fame: William's Collection (x360): Gorgar is a great table that's not terribly hard to keep the ball in play, but it's difficult to hit all the targets to spell out Gorgar. Jive Time is on this collection but it's locked until you complete all 5 goals on any one table. Good luck with that. Pinball is hard. If I get the PS2 or Wii versions it's not locked, so I'll look for those.
Pinball Hall of Fame: Gottlieb Collection (PS2): Big Shot and Genie are both difficult tables. The flippers aren't very big and the center gap is large. I do like Genie though. A very risque table if you look closely at the art and design of it.
Taito Legends 2 (PS2): Lunar Rescue is now my favorite old arcade game. I discovered it in the 2000s. Funspot arcade in New Hampshire has a cabinet of it I'd like to visit one day. It's a spiritual sequel to Space Invaders, I guess. It combines elements of that game, Lunar Lander and Asteroids into one cool package.
Namco Museum Archives (XSX): Galaxian I forgot was made in 1979. Revisiting it reminds me how much old arcade games are quarter munchers. It's very hard to get very far in it. Fun though.
Back to Modern:
Gears of War Ultimate: A Game Pass quest to play one multiplayer match. Did it. Gears has the best third-person shooting ever. Why did Cliffy B leave the franchise after Gears 3? Is he crazy? I wonder what the franchise would have been with him at the helm for three more games. Not to say that Judgment, 4 and 5 were bad, but what would he have done differently?
Earth Defense Force 2025: Limited myself and my friend to a morning of this instead of a whole day. It really beat me down last time. I didn't want to feel like that again. I used my Air Raider for most of this, and it was a lot of fun learning that character's weapons again. I'd bring out a tank, drop rediculously huge missile strikes, and zap my friends and randos with armor boosting tags. Oh, and the robot turrets. I love those.
Assault Android Cactus: Random choice from my digital collection. I believe it was a Games with Gold freebie I never tried before. It's a twin stick shooter and a good one. It's frantic and places a huge number of foes on the screen for you to wipe out. It can get hard though. I lost to some boss and had enough.
Farm Together: Random choice again. Returned to my farm from a few months ago and made good progress on requests and Farm XP. I'm sticking to the requests instead of planting just anything and everything. I'm trying to simplify it. I play until I have to wait for things to grow and then put it down until next time. I love farming. I know real farming is a ton of work, but it seems so rewarding.
Lost Planet 3: So much like Gears but the two games came out only a month apart back in 2006. This, the third one, was out a few years after Gears 3. I chose it randomly and got very engaged with it. I had to pry myself away from it at the end of my weekend. You are a mechanic on a winter world mining a special element to solve Earth's energy problems and make some cash. The weather effects are amazing and dangerous. You run around in a mech (rig) and on foot. You have a grappling attachment and weapons. Its shooting is very similar to Gears and works great. I'm so into this.
That's a week.
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