It’s been a nice week, a bit busy at times. And my lady went away to Melbourne for a meeting. A lonely night. Didn’t have time for a bachelor night of video games though, because it was bible study night. I have done some gaming though, and I’m going to tell you about it. You don’t have to read it, but I’m sure going to write it.

Spirit Tracks had stalled a little after the Water Temple, but I pushed through the Sand Temple, so now I have all the items including the Bow of Light, all the Songs and the better sword, so now I can do some sidequesting! Yay! The game’s fairly easy so I didn’t feel I needed sidequest help, and now I’ll be able to do it all. Thing is, I still really don’t understand how the warp gates work. Oh well train travel doesn’t take too long and there’s plenty of rocks to shoot on the way. I was expecting buying new train parts to increase my speed or something, but they didn’t. Seems pointless.

My completion of Lego Harry Potter 1 on iOS is imminent! I got 100% of items and stuff today, I just want to get the last few Game Centre achievements. The final level I had to do, the Chamber of Secrets, made me tear my hair out as I ran into a few little bugs and crashes that made me restart the level all over, after going through most of it and getting all the items. Very frustrating, and I have to do it again for an achievement. By far the worst level for bugs and stuff, the rest of the game is not too bad. Plus apparently the game doesn’t support multitasking, or at least it takes all my memory, so I lost another half of the same level again. Bleh.

Speaking of bleh, guess what I beat in three days? That’s right, Super Mario 64. How’d you guess? I’m playing all 5 of my 64 3D platformers in order—well, an order I made up, anyway. Roughly it’s the evolution/destabilisation of the genre, kinda. Hard to explain. This is my plan: Super Mario 64, Banjo-Kazooie, Banjo-Tooie, Donkey Kong 64, Conker’s Bad Fur Day. That’s that generation right there. It’s up to you to decide where the peak is, but BFD being last is fitting as it’s a deconstruction/parody of the genre at that point. DK64 should probably be between Kazooie and Tooie, but I wanted those two back-to-back.

So SM64. Ugh. I just, just don’t get how it’s lauded so highly, why it’s the top of so many lists. The game is argh, it’s awkward, it’s barebones, it’s frustrating. A glorified tech demo. It has it’s good points I’ll admit, some good platforming at times and long-jumping around is fun. Exploring and collecting is still inherently fun. But the game is just so flawed. And I’m not giving it a free pass like so many do because “it was the first” or “it’s a pioneer” or something. Structurally, the engine, the presentation, there are problems here.

So I’m not saying I didn’t have a good time, but it was constantly tempered by the game’s shortcomings. Because I know what came later, I’ve played those other 4 games I mentioned and seen how they improved on it at such a basic level. I don’t care if they wouldn’t have gotten made without it, the same excuse will not make me enjoy the original Legend of Zelda either. It doesn’t change the game itself to say that it’s foundational, without also being an exemplary example of the genre (which other games can claim). This is all just my opinion, of course.

A funny side effect of playing it though, is that it made Galaxy seem better in hindsight. I still had problems with that too, it shouldn’t have aped the design of SM64 so slavishly (at least it seemed that way to my overly critical eye). But the comparison makes Galaxy seem a lot more developed and polished. So that was weird. Makes me sad that they didn’t continue developing the concept. Look at the new 3D Mario just announced, 3D World. It’s a translation of 2D gameplay to a 3D space. I’ll take my now “retro” collectathons, thanks. I won’t say any more about it, it’s not worth a full review (ooh, ouch!).

So I’ve soothed myself by starting Banjo-Kazooie, and am now 3 worlds in (100%ed them). It’s a joy. I don’t have to tell you how great this game is. Oh wait, maybe I do. The music is lovely and sets the mood well, transitions smoothly and is super catchy. The play control is excellent, you never have trouble just navigating. The worlds are very well crafted, and feel naturalistic but also present interesting challenges to the player (well it’s been a bit easy so far, but it gets harder). And it’s just full of personality! All the items talk to you, every character is either charmingly cute or charmingly snarky, the worlds are colourful and unique. God, listen to me. Blowing this game’s trumpet. It’s fun, ok?

Well, moving on. I finished Yoshi’s Island on the GBA. I managed to show my wife the last boss, which I always found to be the most impressive single part of the game, and the ending. Great stuff. Now playing the extra levels, which are almost all new to me. I think I played the Poochy one before, but it’s hard to say. It’s very similar to the Looooooong Cave, but shorter, so yeah. This run I mainly played quickly to get through the levels, since I’d just played them on the SNES. So I’ll have to do some extra collection later to unlock the other extra levels. They’re wacky, they got to go all-out with designing more crazy levels since they’re optional. At times they remind me of Yoshi’s Island DS because they’re also quite hard at times.

Yeah that’s about it right now. I did buy a few new games, just little ones. The way things are it’ll be a while before I play them. Bean’s Quest for iOS, it was on Good Game a while back and is $1, Marvel vs Capcom 2 for iOS was on a $1 special. I wanted to play as Mega Man/Roll, despite not liking fighting games, and especially not Street Fighter. Eh it was $1. Also the local pawn shop was having a sale, but the only thing I was remotely interested in was Viva Pinata DS. Cheap so I took the chance, I’m curious to see Rare’s only semi-successful new IP after the Microsoft buyout. At the same time I got Pokemon + Nobunaga’s Ambition for my wife, and she’s having a blast with it so far. Makes me feel good to see that.

Well it’s not exciting but that’s my gaming life. Thanks for reading!