New year! New column! During my absence, I picked up a good number of new video games thanks to Christmas, my birthday and my collecting addiction rearing its ugly head again. Yes, the same ugly addiction that I spent an entire article preaching about how I kicked its ass..has crept back into my life. Well kind of. It’s not as bad as before and I’m actually playing what I’m buying this time around. With that said, my game room/man cave/ nerd den has been slowly filling up over the past month so I thought that going forward; I will share some of the recent additions to my game collection with you guys.

Hyperkin Retron 2: For years I’ve seen the various Retron consoles on Amazon.com and have always scoffed at them. No way was I EVER going to play a single game on a…bleck.. 3rd party console. Plus, no matter what version there always seemed to be some bad reviews concerning certain games not working on them and the sound being sub par at best. Welp, long story short, there was one under the
ol’ Christmas tree for yours truly and I have to say that I’m actually really impressed with this console. It plays SNES and NES games without having to blow into the carts for 5 minutes like a jackass (Yes, I replaced the 72 Pin in my original NES, and no, it wasn’t a dramatic improvement). As far as games not working goes, I own a decent collection of NES games and I haven’t run into one yet that didn’t immediately work. I also really like this console because it cuts back on the amount of wires I have behind my TV and saves on plug space in the power tree (one console as opposed to two) which is essential if you are like me and want all of your consoles to be “Plug and Play”.

South Park: The Stick of Truth (360): I’m a huge fan of South Park, but to be honest I didn’t have high expectations for this game when it was first announced. I was pleasantly surprised. Don’t be fooled by the South Park skin, at this game’s core lies a really solid JRPG. It also doesn’t hurt that it’s hilarious and makes you feel like you are actually in an episode of the show.

Final Fantasy Anthology (PSX): Speaking of JRPG’s, my girlfriend picked up this gem for me. Final Fantasy 5 and 6…you just can’t go wrong. After I complete South Park I plan on diving into FF5.

Deathsmiles (360): A bullet-hell shooter (I’m a fan of the genre), where you choose one of 5 girls (the Xbox mode gives you the choice of an extra character) who each possess magical powers and, well, basically you shoot the crap out of anything that moves, including a giant cow, a pissed off tree, demons, pig chefs, cyclops, lizard men, dancers, dragons, and even Death itself. It’s a great game for when you feel to need to unwind with a game that doesn’t require much
thought.

Persona 4 Arena (360): I can honestly say that I have never played any game in the Persona RPG series, or even had the desire to try one, but I can never resist a 2D fighter. I’ve played this one for only about 40 minutes or so but I enjoyed it and I look forward to breaking this out on the next “nerd night”.

Dead Island (360): I kept meaning to pick this title up but just never got around to it, now that I own it, I can see why it was so popular. It’s an insanely fun and gory shooter. And there are zombies. Good times.

Neo Geo Battle Coliseum (PS2): A 2D fighter consisting of characters from Samurai Shodown, Fatal Fury and other classic Neo Geo games. Now that I own this title, I’m only 1 game away from achieving my goal of owning every 2D fighter for the Playstation 2 (Now I just need to pick up Arcana Heart).

That wraps up this month’s edition of Collector’s Corner. Listen up loyal readers; I’m always on the lookout for any “hidden gem” games to add to my collection. By that I mean any game that didn’t get media attention. If you know of any games that fit that description please let me know in the comments below.
Thanks for reading!

First of all, I just want to apologize to all of you for letting things drop
for the last couple of months. Work and preparing for the holidays took a bigger chunk of my time than I thought it would, which led to me backing off from writing for this glorious website. Well, good news…I’m back!

<Crickets>

Hearthstone: (gasp!!) I know, I know, I feel so dirty saying it but since
Christmas I have been playing a few games every week. A little background info for you: In the spring I used to play Hearthstone on my Mac but soon became..uh..disenchanted.. with the game and decided that it just wasn’t for me. Then after playing the World of Warcraft card game, I completely deleted Hearthstone. Well for Christmas this year, my sister bought me a Kindle HDX and, well, you
can only play so much Fruit Ninja so I grudgingly downloaded the Hearthstone app. I have to say that it’s amazing how much more I like Hearthstone on a tablet. The game itself still isn’t the greatest thing in the world to me but for some reason it feels less like a waste of time when I don’t have to fire up the Mac and log in to Battlenet. I can just tap the icon and it loads right up. I’m still not a daily player and probably will never be but before the tablet I hadn’t played a game in months. I also made the game slightly more enjoyable for
myself by not playing Ranked past Rank 20, which is just enough to earn the new card backing awarded at the end of season. Anything past 20 and I’m getting smoked by people who have multiple legendaries in their decks and clearly play a ton more than I do (and I suspect spend actual money to buy packs, something I
refuse to do). At least at 20 or above when I lose the games are all close for the most part. So, yes, at the moment, I am in fact playing Hearthstone and actually kind of enjoying it.

Dragon Quest IX (DS) (yes, again.): Well I found a couple of the hidden grottos in the game, completed a few side quests, beat the snot out of some monsters, did some level-grinding and went back and fought Corvus (the last boss) again. Same result. Same. F*****. Result. Why do you mock me, RPG Gods?!?!

Diablo 3 (360): Shawn brought this one over a couple of weekends ago and we played it for hour or so and I have to say I really liked it. I hadn’t had a chance to play it before but I loved the first 2 Diablos (and their expansions) for the PC. The 3rd game doesn’t disappoint..it has all of the classic Diablo chaos and mountains of loot that we all know and love. We both picked long-range combat characters and had a pretty sound strategy for the first few quests of the game. Shawn would cast a spell that slowed down our enemies and we would pick them off even before they could get to us. Of course things were going a bit too well and the difficulty ramped up a bit and we started dying a bit more frequently but it was still fun. It’s not all rainbows and kittens though, but we’ll get into that in our 4th podcast. Despite a couple of minor issues I’m looking forward to playing this one again.

Mike Tyson ‘s Punch-Out (NES) The other night I popped this classic into my NES, not really intending to play it, but because I was working on the setup in my game room and wanted to make sure that all of my consoles were working. Right from the opening bell on the title screen I was hooked. I sat down and muttered to myself, ?Just Glass Joe, then I ‘ll get back to finishing up my project. ? Approximately 35 minutes later I was staring at my old nemesis, Soda Popinski. This guy used to absolutely beat the brakes off of me when I was a kid. Yes, that ‘s right; I ‘m ashamed to admit it but I have never beaten Punch-Out. I hated him and you better believe I hated that stupid ******* laugh of his whenever he would knock me down. With my project now completely forgotten, I eagerly pressed ?Start ? so I could show him what the 34 year old me was capable of. Right off the bat, I hit him straight in his eggplant-looking head with a couple jumping right hands, earning myself a super punch. Jumping the gun, I hit ?Start ? and wind up the super punch looking to put him and his red underoos on the mat where that punk belongs. Instead, he smashes me with a huge uppercut and a hook dropping me like a bag of crap. I rapidly hit the A+B buttons and drag myself up off of the mat. Ok, I need to regroup; if I just get the timing down I ‘ll beat him like he stole something. That ?something ? clearly being my pride. Again he goes with the same uppercut that started the knockdown sequence. This time I move to the side and proceed to smash the snot out of him, another missed uppercut leads to another snot-smashing and then it happens; he goes down. On the count of ?5 ? he starts to get up and falls back down. I ‘m going to win! I finally did it! I ‘ve won! I ‘damn, he got back up at ?8 ?. Ok. Let ‘s do this. I hit him with 2 more jumping rights and earn another super punch. He fires 3 jabs in a row and I deftly dodge them and wind up with my hard-earned super punch..and the bell rings. A barrage of expletives flies out of my mouth. ?Ok, this fight isn ‘t getting out of the 2nd round ?, I mutter. He chugs his soda and the fight is back on. I immediately jump up and hit him getting another super punch. He throws his hook and I move to the wrong side, catching it straight in the ol ‘ food hole. Ok, ok, that ‘s alri..damn, another mistimed feint and Mac is now pink as an uppercut finds its mark. Sh*t, I ‘m flustered as my timing is now completely gone which leads to me ending up on the canvas again. No big deal, it ‘s only the first knockdown of this round. I jam on the A+B buttons once again..but this time nothing happens. I ‘m out. Another string of expletives falls out of my mouth as I stare at the screen, not believing that after 25 years, I still can ‘t beat this guy. He takes the center of the ring and laughs at me as I talk myself out of launching my Nintendo controller through my new TV. Well, I was right; it didn’t get out of the 2nd round. God, I love this game.

Ninja Blade (360)-I think the only way I can accurately describe Ninja Blade is by saying that it ‘s a cross between Ninja Gaiden, Devil May Cry, and an action movie. The story is as follows: You play as a ninja, Ken Ogawa, who is a member of an elite special forces team that the Japanese government has called in to try and destroy an infection of Alpha worms that is slowly taking over Tokyo, turning its residents into monster worm creature things. The graphics are decent (although a little on the dark side), the controls are easy to get a hang of, and the gameplay is fun ‘when you are actually playing that is. My only complaint is that there are just way too many of those damn ?push <insert button letter here> now ? QTE (Quick Time Event) challenges. Unfortunately it ‘s a huge piece of this game. This is where the action movie comparison comes into play. After pushing one button, a scene plays out, usually followed by a prompt to quickly hit another button, which is then followed by another scene..etc. After awhile, it feels like you are not playing the game at all, you ‘re just a monkey hitting a button (hopefully) fast enough to move the movie along. If you didn ‘t hit it fast enough, or pressed the wrong one, then the scene rewinds until you actually press the correct damn button fast enough. It ‘s not like you lose a life or anything, it just rewinds. It ‘s too bad that they went so heavy on this mechanic, as the game could have been so much better than it is. That said, it ‘s still a good action/adventure game with a Devil May Cry-like combat system, neat abilities like running along walls and super speed, multiple swords to choose from, and absolutely massive bosses that will make your jaw drop. Fun (sad) fact: In 2009, Ninja Blade made Gamepro ‘s “Top 5 games that no one is playing” list.