PixlBit

Oh man, I've got all sorts of cool meetings set up already!  I'm working on setting up a meeting with Double Fine right now to check out Psychonauts 2.  And I've already got meetings set up with Inti Creates, who make a lot of 2-D Mega Man style action games.  And XSEED is making a game called BurgerTime Party that I'm going to try out.  I also have a meeting with the folks making a new The Dark Crystal game.  I'm not interested in the game much, as it is a tactical strategy RPG, but I'll check out anything Jim Henson related.

But my biggest meeting is one evening while i'm there, I'm hoping to attend a party where they will be celebrating Tetris' 35th Anniversary!  They'll have DJs playing Tetris music, and I MIGHT be able to meet the creator of Tetris in person!  I hope I can do that!

So when you scan the yarn Yoshi while playing the game, another Yoshi will join you, so it's like playing the two player mode with one player.

On the map screen you may have noticed an amiibo hut.  If you scan the yarn Yoshi in there, you'll be able to play as that color in the main game if you pick it.

Do you have any other amiibo figures?  If so, and if they were released before or around the same time as the Yoshi's Woolly World game, you'll be able to get playable yarn Yoshi's who have the same pattern as that amiibo you scanned.  There's nothing like playing the game as a Mega Man Yoshi!

Yeah Pawarumi is pretty hard, as those kinds of games tend to be.

Oh man, Yoshi's Woolly World is SO good.  Out of all the Yoshi sequels, this one comes the closest to recapturing the charm of the original Yoshi's Island.  And the music is excellent.  Here's a couple of samples of my favorites:

Back when I was a kid and would go to Babbage's to look at games (remember that store?) I would remember seeing Defender of the Crown a lot on the PC area.  I remember the graphics being good and it being popular, but even then I knew the gameplay wouldn't be my cup of tea so that's all I know about it.

I played the first area in the demo in 3-D and kept wishing I could see it in 16-bit.  If I do get this game, I'm going to play it ALL in 16-bit!  I didn't get a spirit in Smash for playing the demo, though.  Do I have to finish it?

I'm downloading the demo right now as I type this. I don't know if I'll get the full game, but if you can play the whole demo in 16-bit mode, that may sell me on the game right there.  Plus it'll give me something to do on my lunch hours since I'm giving up on Cadence of Hyrule.  That game kinda sucks.

That's one way to get me to want to play a Forza game, put LEGOs in it.

I think the Ratchet and Clank games were some of the best 3-D platforming in the PS2 generation era.  No disrespect to Mega Man Legends, but the first three Ratchet and Clank games are what a 3-D Mega Man game should've been.  I haven't played the remake yet, but I did see the movie that I think it was based on.  The movie was OK, but it just made me want to play the old games again.

Speaking of Age of Empires, back when I first started writing for The Dallas Morning News, back in 1996, a relative of mine knew someone who just started their own company in Dallas making games.  This company was called Ensemble Studios, and they invited me to visit them to check out their new game they were working on.  It was called Age of Empires, and they hadn't even found a publisher yet, but they said, "We're thinking about Microsoft."  Smart move, I thought.  Anyway, once the games came out I reviewed a few of them at the newspaper.