I freeze framed on an ad to look at all the hats you could unlock for the new Pac-Man game. I saw one for Klonoa, Katamari, and a few for Dig Dug! I hope I can unlock those!
As a kid I was always conflicted about Pac-Man cereal. I love Pac-Man, and I love cereal. But Pac-Man cereal had marshmallows and I've always hated marshmallows. If I went to a friend's house and they ate Lucky Charms for breakfast, i'd always take out my marshmallows and put them in my friend's bowl. And their mom would wonder why they were so hyper for the rest of the day. Pac-Man cereal lasted a pretty long time for that kind of thing, though. Probably because they added marshmallows later like giant Super Pac-Man marshmallows (to add insult to injury), and Ms. Pac-Man marshmallows (which looked like teeth to me).
Ah, Namco Museum vol. 4, the one with the C on the cover. Probably had the best museum music in the whole franchise. Best game on that one was Ordyne. My brother Jeff and I played that a lot when he was a kid. He could never remember the name, so he called it "The Flying Game." Took me forever to figure out what he was talking about when he first asked to play it by that name. Wish we got Namco Museum Encore in the US.
YOUR pretend present is a box of new Streets of Rage Cereal! It has super vitamins in it, so when you eat it, you'll be strong enough to punch oil barrels and disintergrate them with one hit, and you'll be able to beat up ALL the bad guys!
Stay away from it. It's one of the worst games I've played this year. I love the fact that the first 'boss' you encounter, you can just walk past it and go through the door on the other side to go to the next level!
I'd love to get that jigsaw puzzle for my dad. But right now, jigsaw puzzles are hard for him to do with all the grandkids around.
My gaming plan is to try and play and review all the games I can and have fun. Not much of a plan, but that's how I roll. :)
Even though I still like the original the best, Pac-Man: CE 2 is a lot of fun. I can't wait for the new Pac game which comes out early next year: Pac-Man Maze Tunnel Battle: Chomp Champs!
I have Viva Pinata: Party Animals. I tried to get my friends to play it online back in the day with me, but it didn't work.
Ha ha! You played Onechanbara? That game is a hoot. So stupid you have to laugh at it.
I never played the sequel because it was never available to rent at my local video and game rental place, but the first one was and I rented that a few times. I loved Yuzo Koshiro's music in the first one.
I usually stayed away from third party controllers because they felt more janky than the first party ones. But there were a couple of exceptions.
Even though it was technically first party, I loved the NES Advantage joystick as a kid. I later learned it was actually made by Hori.
I never got the Super NES Advantage, but one year for Christmas I did get something called the ASCII Pad. It was a SNES controller with turbo switches for all the buttons, and even though it was lighter, it didn't feel flimsy or anything. It was my go-to SNES controller from then on.
I really wish I would've gotten the Namco made PSOne controllers. They had the NegCon and the JogCon. I would have loved to tried those. Namco's light guns on the PS1 and PS2 were great.
And to answer a question from a previous podcast, yes I did play Arcade Paradise:
http://www.gamerdad.com/blog/2023/05/12/the-games-of-arcade-paradise/
I got my copy of Super Mario RPG this past weekend, too. Man the graphics on it look so clear and sharp and colorful!
Too bad you couldn't get the SNES version of ClayFighter. The Genesis version pales in comparison.
You had several paragraphs in your post as well as pictures, so I don't consider that 'low effort.' Doesn't make me want to go to Reddit anytime soon.
I had the opportunity to review Spirttea. I passed up on it because I had too much on my plate at the time. Kind of reminded me of that Spirited Away movie.
I've never played Vampire Survivor, but I reviewed a game that tried to imitate it recently called CatLord. I bet it wasn't as good, though.
New Pokemon Snap was my GOTY for 2021. I loved how HAL made the first game, but Namco made the second one. SPOILER ALERT: Prof. Oak isn't in the second game, but another character from the first game does return.
Another standout game for me was Ys 9: Monstrum Nox. My mom was going through her breast cancer surgery when this came out, so it was a great way to escape when things got rough. I was so happy when all that was over!
Psychonauts 2 was all right, but it was no where near as funny as the first game. We live in a world now where everyone gets offended by everything, so I think the game suffered from that. Actually humor in general has. Everyone needs to lighten up.
Other notable games I played were Metroid Dread, Pac-Man 99, ActRaiser Renaissance, The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, and WarioWare: Get it Together!
