Conquering Undiscovered Territories

I love being in the right place at the right time.  I decided to go and visit some friends that live out of town and happened to drive by a brand new pawn shop that I found out had only been open for a couple of weeks.  When I popped in, the store was covered wall to wall in video games, and boy was I in for a treat!  The folks there were having a buy 3 get one free promotion, and you could mix and match between platforms.  I was in heaven!  Most of their stock hadn’t been picked over yet, and I never like sales where I’m restricted to just one game type.  What was especially exciting for me was that I could include NES/SNES/N64 games in the deal if I wanted to.  It’s something I’ve never been allowed to do at other stores because the retro games never go on sale.  I like it and will definitely be going back.

Unfortunately for me, many of the older console games the shop had were ones I’ve collected already or ones I had no interest in.  There was one in the bunch that I did want to get though, and that was The Adventures of Lolo for NES.  I recently picked up the sequel to this game but had yet to find the first.  The salespeople kindly took $5 off the game’s price tag and allowed it to be my “free” game at $15.  It was in great shape, and it’s from a great franchise.  I look forward to trying out some of the puzzles and hearing that sweet, sweet level music on loop for a long while!

I’ve been looking a little more seriously at Playstation and Playstation 2 games recently, and I found three games that fit this bill at the shop.  The first was a Playstation game called Vandal Hearts, a strategy RPG that I’ve heard is excellent from several folks here as well as the internet in general.  The disc was in pretty good shape, and I managed to haggle away $10 because the game did not come with its manual.  I got it for $30, and it’s going onto my ever-growing list of things I need to play.  I don’t know about you folks, but between Vandal Hearts, Vanguard Bandits, Valkyrie Profile, etc., I can’t keep these PS RPGs straight in my head.  I had to phone my boyfriend and ask him if we had this game already because the V-names are too plentiful for my brain to keep track of.

The last two games I got were for the PS2.  The first was Dawn of Mana which came complete with its manual.  I was surprised to see this game priced at $25 since it has gotten such lukewarm reviews online from so many people, but I think it was priced higher because of its roots in Square Enix and the popularity of the Mana series.  I will give this game a shot someday, and I hope it doesn’t disappoint me!  Also, it’s uncanny how much the girl on the cover of the game looks just like Princess Garnet from FFIX.  And the guy with the giant sword could pretty easily be Zidane.  I’ve been looking pretty hard for a tail.  Just sayin’.

On another note which I promise is not entirely random, I’m don’t think I’ve ever felt more disappointed playing a video game than I did when I played Dark Cloud.  I know it’s an unpopular opinion since I know many people that love the game, but this was one of the first games where I had to deal with weapons breaking, a confusing interface, lack of restorative items and direction in the early parts of the game, all of which left me feeling frustrated and bitter.  I started the game up again a few years ago and hated it all over again, but when I happened to see a copy of Dark Cloud 2 at the shop for a pretty decent price of $15, I found myself in a bit of a pickle.  I’ve watched/read many reviews on Dark Cloud 2 and have heard nothing but good things, and from what I understand, it built upon and fixed a lot of the issues I had with the first game.  The game came complete and was also in great condition, so I decided to jump in cautiously, feet first and nose plugged.

I think I really got a good deal on this game.  I’ve seen it going locally and online for around $30, so I can’t complain about getting it for half price.  Let’s just hope that I enjoy it a little more than its predecessor.

All in all, it was nice to finally be in the right place at the right time and discover something new for a change.  Hopefully that place will continue to be fruitful moving forward!

Thanks for reading!

-GG

Mailbox Madness – Guides and Games

It’s a bit of a bittersweet day today since the last of the fun things I’ve been waiting for in the mail have finally arrived. There’s nothing quite like having something to look forward to, especially with all this snow we’ve been getting!  Mail is a nice distraction, but I probably won’t be ordering anything else for a little while.

The first item I ordered was to round out the boxed copy of Dragon Warrior for NES I received recently from a kind internet friend.  I got the Explorer’s Handbook, a detailed guide book with dos and don’ts for the game for when I finally get around to playing it again.  All I’m missing to have a “complete” version of the game is the bestiary poster that has information on all the game’s enemies.  The person who sent me the game is keeping her eye out for it in storage.  Hopefully she can find it and send it to me eventually – I love that kind of stuff!  The Explorer’s Handbook has a pretty fun sense of humour!  I love how it references characters from Nintendo Power magazine and from other NES games of the day.

The second item I received today was one I chanced upon when I was shopping for Psychic World.  I was buying from an overseas seller in France and had a look-see at what else they had in their eBay store.  On what felt like page 23849, I saw a North American copy of Secret of Mana for the SNES with its manual and map/poster.  I was shocked to see the price of the game at $120 CDN since at swaps and online, the lowest price I’ve ever seen the game in that condition/level of completeness was $200 with the higher end of that bracket stretching up to nearly $400.  It was a bit of an impulse buy, but I got it!  I am so, so excited to have that game complete.  Since I got a bunch of SNES games CIB last summer, I’ve been itching to find more for a decent price and this was it!  Everything is in pretty good shape, though the manual’s corners are a little bit creased.

The map/poster was in wonderful condition as well.  I’ve often seen this Secret of Mana artwork recreated and adapted, and seeing it firsthand for the first time is really nice.  So nice in fact that I might just consider putting it up in the Nerd Room after I play the game and won’t need the map again for a while.  The map itself on the poster’s reverse side is very plain and a bit underwhelming in my humble opinion.  After seeing the map for Miracle Warriors, every map is going to pale in comparison I suppose.

I wish it was already Spring so that I could get back to swapping and thrifting and yard sale-ing again, but there’s still at least two more months of cold Canadian winter to contend with.  In the meantime, I suppose I will continue on my quest to beat back my backlog with a metaphorical 2×4 with nails hammered into it for extra brandishing effect.  I wanted to thank those of you who have been checking out my LP videos on YouTube/Vidme, and that have been hanging out with me in my streams.  The company and support means the world to me.

Until next time!  Thanks for reading!

-GG

An Overseas Treat: Psychic World (SMS)

When I think about the games I love the most, they are all concentrated on several consoles like NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, Playstation, etc.  There are so many excellent games to be played on those consoles alone that I could spend the rest of my life doing just that, but in the interest of pushing against the edges of my comfort zone, I’ve been trying to get to know other consoles outside of what was popular in my region.  The Sega Master System was not a system I grew up with at all, nor do I even own myself – the one we have belongs to my boyfriend.  He bought it at the very first swap we ever went to together for $60, and ever since then I’ve been scouring the SMS library for games that might interest me.

You may recall that I recently picked up 11 RPG-style games for the Sega Master System and I’ve finally started to play through them on my Twitch channel.  The more I play the SMS, the more in love I become with its graphics and sound.  It by far outcompetes a lot of what I’ve experienced on the NES, its main competitor.  Beyond the few games I’ve fiddled with so far, I hadn’t really seen many games that I might be interested in since many of the console’s well-known hits are “run and guns” or fighting games, and those don’t really do it for me.  The other day, I decided to sit down and watch a YT video of someone’s top SMS games, and I found a game that immediately grabbed my attention: Psychic World.  When I started researching, I was pretty bummed because I found out that it was only released in Europe and in Japan.  At first I thought I wouldn’t be able to find it or even be able to play it on my NTSC system, but I had a look around and it turns out that the SMS isn’t region locked between Europe and North America due to the cartridges being exactly the same shape/format.  Apparently the Japanese games have a different cartridge shape altogether and can only be played on the equivalent Japan-exclusive console called the Sega Mark III.  I tracked down a copy of Psychic World on eBay from a seller in France and ordered it.  It’s a little beat up and just arrived today!

The game features a female protagonist attempting to rescue her sister who has gone missing after an explosion in a laboratory.  The gameplay mechanic is similar to that found in other games where powerups and abilities are required to make it past obstacles to access new areas of the game.  It’s not an open world adventure, but rather one with several levels that are long and require the use of many different strategies to be successful.  It’s definitely interesting, and I’m planning to play through it soon.

One thing I can definitely comment on is that as beautiful as NTSC SMS games are, the PAL games are even more beautiful!  I am so, so jealous of people from the PAL region that got to experience all those extra scanlines and pixels to make the video game experience that much more detailed and aesthetically appealing.  With our professional video monitor, the retro gaming experience we have is just gorgeous.  Unfortunately for the moment, we can only output in composite video so the video quality is a bit poor, but I recorded some gameplay for anyone interested in seeing what the game is all about.

The harder I look, the more this console is becoming a fast favourite.  If you haven’t had a chance to check out the Sega Master System, it comes highly recommended by yours truly.

Thanks for reading!

-GG

Stranger Kindness

Happy New Year to everyone!  I hope that you all had a chance to enjoy yourselves on the last night of 2016 and are off to a great start to the year today.  I had a mild fever last night and feel like I got hit by a truck today, so I feel like things can only go up from here, right?  Right!

I’ve mentioned a few times since starting this blog that one of the awesome benefits of being a part of the broader gaming community has been meeting some wonderful people.  One of those wonderful people I met is a Twitter user who casually asked me one day if I wanted a game of hers she was looking to part with.  When I said I’d take it off her hands, she also told me that she wanted to get rid of some NES games, and after an exchange of information, I had a package in the mail on its way to me.  I was very touched by this person’s actions.  Not only has she been a wonderful support to myself and many others in the Twitterverse, she reached out to me and gave me a gift when she barely knows me at all.  It’s not something that has happened to me before or that I expect to ever happen again, but it was incredibly meaningful to me.

She sent me a few things, and the first was a pristine copy of Final Fantasy Legend for Game Boy.  I found a copy of Final Fantasy Legend III over the summer with a destroyed label and had been looking for the first and second parts of the series ever since with no luck.  The game looks flawless, like it has never even been put inside of a Game Boy!  I promised that after I get through my Sega Master System RPG run that I’d stream this game, so let’s hope I haven’t tired of RPGs by then (as if I could ever!)

She sent me four NES games in total as well, and the first three were Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt, Final Fantasy, and Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse.  I was very excited for this, especially for Final Fantasy and the Castlevania games!  When I was testing them out, there was nothing quite like popping in the FF cartridge and listening to the intro music on the real deal.  It was so fulfilling.  A long, long time ago, my most unfavourite cousin had a copy of FF, and when I was about 5 or 6 years old I used to ask him to let me play it with him.  He never did let me play and despite me asking many times to borrow the game, his entire collection sat in his parents’ house for many years untouched.  One day when I was in my early teens, I was out at a store called the Bi-Way with my mom, and the store occasionally sold used video games.  I saw Final Fantasy there and nearly screamed with excitement, but my mom refused to buy it for me despite my pleading.  I was pretty upset and sulky, so my mom had gone back a few days later to pick it up but it was gone.  Though Final Fantasy didn’t come home with her that day, I did get the most horrible consolation game ever: Mario is Missing.  I did own a copy of Final Fantasy for a time in my twenties, but I passed it along to a friend to play and never saw it again.  It is really nice to finally have a copy of this game again!

I’m also not particularly well-versed in Castlevania games.  I got my ass handed to me quite quickly by the first boss and then had to use a continue after accidentally falling off stairs into an abyss.  I am planning to practice this game a little more and maybe seek out the first game for the NES since I’ve got the second one hanging around somewhere.  They seem fun enough!

The last NES game I received was Dragon Warrior, and what was special about it was that it came with its box!  I have very few boxed NES games from my childhood since the boxes always just got in the way when I wanted to get out my cartridges.  If boxed games appear in my life at a decent price, I normally grab them even if I already have a loose copy of the game hanging around.  I picked up the instruction booklet pictured below from eBay and have also ordered a copy of the quest guide so I might finally be able to beat this one.  Before hitting university, I think I sunk 50+ hours into my friend’s copy of the game before her brother wanted it back, so this is another opportunity to relive something from my past.  Woohoo!

I can’t say enough how positive this experience was for me.  It really gave me something to look forward to over the holiday season, which isn’t always the easiest time of year for me.  I’m hoping some day that I’ll be able to repay her for her kindness, or pass it along somehow!

Thanks for reading, and happy 2017!

-GG

Quelle Suprise

My boyfriend has been having some trouble with his Neo Geo MVS.  The sound fades away entirely after two minutes, so he has been doing some tinkering to see if he can fix it.  After trying a capacitor replacement with no luck, he was fiddling around with the BIOS chip for fun and decided to remove it.  Well, he found a little something underneath it that he wasn’t expecting.

Here’s some photos of the board with the – gasp! – pentagram…

A pentagram, eh?  I wonder why on earth that would be there.  I’ve searched online and can only find one other photo from a retro website of the same thing on another Neo Geo board with no explanation at all.  Any search I’ve made about pentagrams and electronics has only let me to satanic-based sites, so I’m done filling up my Google search memory with that topic!  I’m genuinely curious as to whether or not the people at the factory were super into metal music or whether there’s something else at play there.  For the time being, I’m hoping (maybe praying?) that the floor beneath me doesn’t open up to the fiery pits of Hell.

Does anyone have any ideas about this?  It’s clearly not just a one-off thing and was printed on the board with the other labels.  It’s not as if the BIOS chip is something that is normally removed, so why put there at all?  So interesting!

As always, thanks for reading!

-GG

Post Christmas Post

Happy belated Christmas/almost New Years!  I hope that you are all enjoying some downtime or at least getting to do the things you love best this holiday season, whatever those things may be.  For us, between an ice storm and a bunch of snow, we’ve been stuck in town away from friends and family.  It’s been a nice change of pace from the usual running around we do being the only out-of-towners of our bunch, so I truly can’t complain!

We spent our first Christmas together just the two of us (this was planned and not due to weather constraints!) and finally got around to completing a 550 piece The Legend of Zelda puzzle we had picked up a few years ago.  While listening to the musings of the McCallister family in Home Alone followed by grunts and utterings of Arnold Schwarzenegger in Jingle All the Way (this was my first and last time watching this movie, ugh), it took us most of Christmas night and the next evening to complete it.  We’ve glued a backing onto it and are planning to frame it and hang it up in the Nerd Room at some point in the near future.

For Christmas, I received another 550 piece puzzle from one of my best friends, so that was part of the motivation to get the one we already had finished!  This one looks like it’ll be significantly less complicated than the one we just did since there are way more colours than various shades of brown.  I just adore the stained glass Zelda art that pops up in my life once in a while.  It’s very fitting to the series and I am now going to be on the lookout for these beautiful puzzles on a more regular basis!

After a lull in the awful weather yesterday, we finally got out to do a bit of thrifting.  We picked up a few Xboxes to mod and give away as gifts to friends when we finally see them, but I was lucky enough to chance upon the tail end of a Boxing Day sale in a hock shop.  They had a bunch of 25% off signs on their PS3 and Xbox360 games, but I ran straight for the 70% off PSP basket.  As you may recall, I recently found two PSPs for $5 and $15 respectively, but didn’t have any games to try out.  I dug out two games from that heaping discount bin: Dissidia Final Fantasy and Daxter, recommended by LightningEllen.  I’m still keeping my eye out for Lumines, which was another recommendation from That Geek Erik.  Now that I know my PSPs can read discs, I just need to track down a memory card.  I have a Sony memory card from an old digital camera I own that might work.

Because of the 70% off sale, I only paid $5 for both games!  I tried them both out, and Daxter is certainly looking like it’ll be a fun time.  I was pretty overwhelmed with the tutorial stuff for Dissidia Final Fantasy, but I’ll have to take more time and get to know the game and its controls a little better.

I have an amazing thing I want to post about, but I’m going to save it for another time once it has all sunk in and I’ve had time to process it.  In the meantime though, I hope you’re all staying warm!

Thanks for reading,

-GG

Neo Geo MVS – Again? Yes!

So apparently I should’ve waited until today to make my post about the Neo Geo stuff since most of the outstanding items I mentioned yesterday have suddenly appeared today in the mail, and with fun overseas Christmas stamps on the packaging to boot!  Normally I wouldn’t make an entirely separate post about this, but the supergun we received is so interesting and fun to look at, you’ll understand why I wanted you all to see it fresh in a new post rather than editing the old one and risk you all missing it.

The manufacturers of this particular board added some really cute touches in the form of various pixel art characters, so to a layman like me, the supergun is not just another boring board to stare at while my boyfriend gushes on about all the things he wants to do next with it.  I found at least six different pixel art characters here.  I’m not sure which games all of them are from, but if you have any idea, please let me know!

We also received the Neo Geo to Sega Genesis controller converters today as well.  These plug in directly to the left side of the board shown in the above photo and allow for a regular Sega Genesis controller to be used to play the games.  Pretty neat!

The only thing we are missing is the SCART cable, which should arrive sometime later this month.  In the meantime, my boyfriend has an opportunity to figure out how he wants to encase the supergun.  He’s thinking clear plexiglass so that we will still be able to see all the cuteness on the board itself!

That’s all for now.  I hope you’re all staying warm in this progressively colder weather.

Thanks for reading!

-GG

Neo Geo MVS

My boyfriend has really taken a liking to a Neo Geo games ever since he modded his first Xbox a few months ago and installed CoinOPS.  He has discovered games like Neo Turf Masters and Baseball Stars 2, but has also gone back to old classics like the Metal Slug games.  This development has fueled his blazing interest in arcade machines.  I mentioned a few months ago that he was in the process of building an arcade cabinet himself to house a small broadcast video monitor we had found, and the plan was to hook up some of our modded consoles to it to play games that way.  Well, plans have changed a bit upon discovering the possibility of installing Neo Geo guts into this thing, and that possibility became a reality last week!

It all started when my boyfriend posted an ad on the local classifieds site asking if anyone nearby might have some Neo Geo stuff that they were willing to part with.  He was looking for games or hardware to play them on, and he was specifically after a Multi Video System (MVS), which is essentially arcade guts.  This is different from the home console version that goes by Advanced Entertainment System (AES), and is just a naked board with a game slot on it that you can “consolize”.  This was the most inexpensive option since AES versions of the Neo Geo are ridiculously expensive, and its games are ludicrously priced.  For me to say ludicrously priced, it has to be pretty bad, and it is.  Depending on the game, some Neo Geo AES games can go for anywhere from $50 to $10 000 if they are complete with their instruction manual.

Like an angel from above, a person responded to my boyfriend’s ad and said that he had a one slot Neo Geo MVS available.  Other people had four slot MVSs available, but a four slot is bulky  and much more than we probably wanted to pay for need.  We were looking for something a little more streamlined.  Here is a photo of the board, and a second one showing the cartridge slot.

Conveniently, the person selling is also a huge arcade buff and had a few games he was willing to part with.  My boyfriend was extremely interested in Metal Slug 3, an awesome run and gun game that is part of a well-loved series in the arcade community.   The best part?  It came complete with its entire kit, including marquee inserts and the instruction sheet for DIP switches that can be adjusted to change variables within the game.

I can’t get over how much bigger these cartridges are compared to the ones that I’m used to.  They are monsters!  Here’s a comparison between the Neo Geo cartridge and a SNES cartridge.  In the bottom photo, you can see the small SNES cartridge board contacts compared to the massive double Neo Geo boards.

We are well on our way to having an up-and-running Neo Geo MVS, but a few things are still required and are on their way in the mail.  The first thing we are waiting for is a supergun.  The supergun allows the MVS board to be used without an actual arcade cabinet setup and facilitates signal output from the MVS board and game to a monitor.  Conveniently for us, it can output in RGB, which is why we are also waiting for a SCART cable to arrive.  Because Neo Geo controllers are so difficult to come across, we decided to get some Neo Geo to Sega controller converters.  That way, we can use Sega Genesis controllers to play the games, but my boyfriend is also ordering standard arcade buttons as well.

The long story short is that soon we will have not only a working, legitimate arcade machine for our cabinet, but we will also have the availability to hook up games using modded consoles.  The best part is that they’re all going to look amazing on our broadcast video monitor for a true retro gaming experience.

I will post more on the cabinet itself when it is complete.  There are still a lot of little things left to finish!

Thanks for reading, as always.

-GG

 

Being Stealthy at Hit and Runs Gives You a Heart of Gold…? Uhm…

Things have been awfully slow on the retro collecting front lately.  People are in “Christmas Mode” and are selling package deals on the latest and greatest last generation consoles/games rather than parting with their much older counterparts.  If anyone wants used PS3s, XBox 360s and Wiis, now is the time to be looking!

I did manage to sniff out a few things in the last couple of weeks that I’ve been saving up to make a respectable post.  The first was Stealth, an NES game we got for $6 at the thrift store with its manual.  I am personally awful at these first person perspective flight shooters, but my boyfriend was excited to find it.  The game and manual were in good shape, and for $6, you can’t complain!

The second game I tracked down was at the same thrift store on a different day, and it was The Simpsons Hit and Run on GameCube.  We snagged that one complete with its manual and case for $7, which was a great deal since I’d only ever seen it for $15 or more at swaps and in hock/pawn shops.  As a Simpson’s fan since childhood and as someone who enjoyed a little Grand Theft Auto back in the day, I can’t see an issue with marrying the two here.  The game disc does look used with lots of tiny surface scratches, but I think it’ll play just fine!  I’ve always adored games that drop you into Springfield, and I will admit that I was briefly enamoured with The Simpsons Tapped Out mobile game a few years ago.  I just love seeing that kind of world come to life with familiar faces and places I’ve known since my youth.  I’m looking forward to giving this one a spin (pun intended).

Finally, I found someone selling a copy of Pokemon Heart Gold on the local classifieds site for $40.  It came with its cardboard box, the plastic game case and all its inserts, as well as the manual and the game itself.  The only thing that was missing was the Pokewalker.  As nice as it would be to have, I couldn’t see myself using since I don’t really do much gaming outside of my home.  When I phoned the seller, what sounded like a very young boy answered, and he turned out to be the person selling the game.  We had a lengthy conversation about how he came to find the game and what kind of shape it was in.  He was exceptionally professional and well-spoken, which prompted lots of images of a grown man with a child’s voice in my head.  When I went to go pick up the game, he was probably 12 or 13, and so nice and polite!  I’ve been having bad luck with horrible people on the classifieds sites lately, so this interaction was extremely refreshing.  The game is in pretty great shape, though the cardboard box has seen better days.  It’s a little crushed and ripped on one of its ends, but overall it still has its integrity.  A little reinforcing with some thin cardboard will sturdy it up!

Despite my best efforts, I’ve been missing out on game lots to people who offer a seller way more than what they’re asking for in their ads.  For example, if a seller is asking for $200 for a bunch of games, people are offering $400-$500!  There’s no way to compete with people who are willing to overpay for common games.  I will just sit quietly and wait for good deals to surface again.

Well, today is the day that we will put up our Christmas tree.  If you celebrate, I hope that you’re slowly getting into the holiday spirit!

Thanks so much for reading.

-GG

Liebster Award – Third Time’s a Charm

I can’t help but feel humbled whenever I read someone’s award post and see my name come up in the nominations section.  These blog awards are so great in that not only do you get to feel a little loved for your efforts in the blog world, but you also have the opportunity to get to know others in this awesome community.  I can’t say enough how grateful I am for the people that I have gotten to know over the last 8 months!  Thank you very much to I Heart Old Games and Sublime Game Reviews for nominating my blog for the Liebster Award.  Both of these bloggers review games (old and new, respectively) and been recipients to this wonderful award themselves, and their blogs most definitely deserve some attention!  If you haven’t checked them out yet, you’re missing out!  Go there now!  Don’t even read the rest of this!

The rules:

1. Thank the person who nominated you and answer the questions they’ve written for you.
2. Nominate 5-11 blogs and provide new questions to answer.

I think I took care of the first part above!  I suppose since Sublime Game Reviews nominated me first, I will start with those questions!

1. Why did you decide to start your blog?

   I started this blog after having an absolutely surreal experience in retro game hunting when my boyfriend and I doubled our video collection in a single day for a few hundred dollars (read here and here, and here).  After telling a few people about it and having them nod and smile politely at me, I felt deflated.  I had the urge to share this experience and eventually connect with other people that might actually care, but truthfully, I started this blog for myself to have a place to chronicle my retro game hunting efforts after that.  Some folks spontaneously stumbled upon my retro game hunting adventures, and here I am 8 months later still doing it.

2. What is your favorite hobby and how long have you been doing it?

   Apart from my addicting hobby of retro game hunting/collecting, I can honestly say that I love gardening and plants in general.  When I moved into an apartment, I had five houseplants.  That number has slowly increased to 36 since moving into a home, and my boyfriend and I also keep flowerbeds and a vegetable garden during the summer months.  I like low maintenance gardening, so perennials and a few hardy vegetable plants are perfect for me!  My tulips are my absolute favourite thing.  Seeing them poke up after a long winter warms my heart.

3. Do you remember what your first rated R movie was?

   If my memory serves me correctly, it might have been the first Terminator movie.  I remember being sick and home from school as a little kid and my mom was watching it while she thought I was asleep on the couch.  I coughed through lots of it.  I was shushed a lot.

4. What video game that you have played had the best story?

   I definitely adored the story in Undertale.  I should also mention my first point-and-click adventure games: The Curse of Monkey Island, King’s Quest VI and Fable (a PC game from 1996, not the XBox games).  Those were some of the earliest experiences I had with story-driven gaming, and they have a place close to my heart as well.

5. What is the perfect way to spend your weekend? Exclude favorite hobby mentioned earlier.

   I like to spend my weekends relaxing.  My job is pretty high stress, so downtime is really important to me.  I spend a lot of my weekends doing things I enjoy like travelling to different places in search of flea markets and thrift stores during the summer months when the driving is good up here in Canada, but in the winter months I thoroughly enjoy curling up and having pajama days.

 

Now to get to the questions posed by I Heart Old Games!

1. Pitch your dream movie. Actors, directors, plot, whatever.

   Oh wow.  This is a tough question because I’m not big into movies at all.  I don’t know many actors or directors, but I’d love to see a good comedy movie.  Today’s movies seem to have jokes spelled out for you.  I miss subtle humour from the 80s and 90s.  I have not seen a single new comedy movie and enjoyed it.  I am not a very funny person, so it might not be a good idea for me to be giving advice on plot!

2. Most/least favourite movie.

   The movies I go back to the most and like a lot are Mean Girls and the original trilogy Star Wars movies.  I could watch them every day and never feel tired of them.  For a movie I like the least, I once watched a movie with Bill Murray in it, and he was an angry fisherman seeking some sort of vengeance?  I don’t remember much from it, but it was probably the worst movie I’ve ever seen in my entire life.  I usually love Bill Murray, so it was an incredibly sad day for me.

3. Most/least favourite game.

   I have a long list of favourite games, and they’re all your regular suspects.  Near the top are Faxanadu, The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, and Super Mario Bros. 2.  I also love FFIX and FFIV a lot.  My least favourite games have to include most fighting games.  I’ve never been able to get into them.

4. Most/least favourite band.

   My favourite band is The Offspring.  I have all their CDs and have had the pleasure of seeing them live once.  My music tastes are fairly diverse, and I don’t have an issue with most music.  If I can classify them as bands, Nelly Furtado and Cheryl Crow are just the worst.  And ACDC.  I don’t even know how to classify their lead singer’s voice, but it’s grating and I hate it.  The rock station in town plays ACDC every five minutes, and that’s why I don’t listen to that station!

5. How, or why, did you get into blogging? And what are your favourite aspects of it?

   I mentioned above why I got into blogging, but I can say that my favourite aspect of it is the connectivity it brings.  I’ve never felt more a part of a community than I do now here on WP with all you wonderful people.

6. Last crime you committed?

   I accidentally stole a pen from a hotel.  I considered taking their pillows on purpose (so comfy!), but the pen was entirely an accident.

7. Favourite book?

   I really enjoyed books I read in highschool/university and had a chance to study.  One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and To Kill a Mockingbird are great stories that I truly got a chance to understand.  I tend to skim when I read novels, so being forced to study a book and its themes really makes me appreciate it more.  I haven’t read a good book in a long time, so if anyone has any suggestions, I’d love some!

8. Favourite hobbies beside blogging and doing what you blog about?

   I already mentioned gardening above, but one of the things I also love doing in my spare time is streaming games.  I’m starting to get into the habit of playing through games casually while streaming, and following up with a proper playthrough that gets uploaded to YouTube.  I have no intention of “making it big” as a streamer or as a YouTuber, but I think the accountability to others that comes from those activities is something I need.  I have so many games that I need to play, and playing them purposefully is a good thing!  I’m also a little obsessed with making thumbnails for videos on YT as well.

That about wraps up the questions.  They were truly a pleasure to answer.  I am going to pull a Shameful Narcissist and nominate everyone that reads this entry for this award.  I’ve nominated many folks in the past with previous award posts, so I’d truly like to acknowledge all the people who take the time to read my stuff regularly.  Please reply in the comments if you don’t feel like making your own post!

Here are some questions for you all.  Please don’t feel the need to answer them all, but even answering one will be fun to read!

1. What is your favourite piece of music from a video game?
2. Where is the most exciting place you’ve ever travelled to?
3. Do you have something from your past that you gave/threw away that you wish you’d kept?
4. If you celebrate, what is your favourite tradition for the holidays?
5. What is your favourite kind of tree?
6. What’s a hobby or interest you had in childhood that you wish you would’ve pursued further?
7. What is the thing you’re the proudest of building/making?

That’s all I can muster!  Thanks again to my nominators!  I will be making a separate post for the PANDA award soon.  Thank you to all of you that have spoken so kindly about me and my blog 🙂  I will return the favour in due time!

Thanks for reading!

-GG