I just had an interview with Conglometroid over my latest project. Click here for the interview.

I love the Metroid Prime series, so when I came across a resin mushroom, I knew what I had to do with it.

Saturnine mushrooms are benign plants found throughout Tallon VI. They do not seem to harm anyone or anything, but they are photo luminescent. I painted the mushroom with black paint, gave it white lines and then covered the while with a glow in the dark quasar blue paint for effect.

In 2008 I bought the Lord of the Rings Battle for Middle Earth Anthology. I paid $22.48 with shipping. Here’s my receipt from Amazon:

About a year later, I wanted to play multiplayer mode with my family and friends, but I only have one copy of the game. I figured $20 would be well worth it for the fun that it would generate. I headed off to Amazon only to find this:

After 12 months the game had jumped from under $20 to almost $200. If I wasn’t so attached to the game I would have thrown my copy up for sale to see what kind of cash I could rake in. I didn’t though, because it’s a good game and I still have to beat it.

Out of curiosity, I went back again on September 8th to check the price. The price had dropped tremendously, but was still more than I was willing to spend.

It’s really amazing how games change prices over time. There needs to be an app or service which you can use to track the changes in price. How about a piece of software that tracks the current price of an item on a number of different sites and offers the option to auto-buy an item if it drops below a target price? (Provided you have an account on that site, of course.) Now I think that sounds like a killer app!

Price Check:Battle for Middle Earth Anthology on Amazon

I was almost positive I had posted these before, but I can’t find them in my archives. Enjoy.

If you were Princess Peach I would gladly brave all 8 world of Super Mario to save you.

You are hotter than Brinstar Depths.

You are as beautiful as a cut scene graphic.

I feel like a Game Console because you turn me on.

The only thing greater then my kill count is my love for you.

I usually go for head shots, but right now I am aiming for your heart.

In my 32 bit world, you’re a 64

You make my processor overheat

You’re more of an adventure then every Zelda game.

Took some time last week to play around with some Photoshop. Here’s my results. Not perfect, but I had fun and the result makes me happy. Now it’s your turn. What would your gamer grave look like?

I stopped at the potion shop and bought some potions today. Almost ran out of Rupees. This batch should last me awhile though, I don’t fight as many boss battles as I use too.

I had some time to think today and began to think about the video games that really rock my world. It is hard for me to choose my favorite video games, because I like several of them a lot and hold their potential values about equal in my mind. Some of it simply has to do with the mood I am in. But not only did I want to think about what video games I like, I wanted to look into why I like them so much and what it is that attracts my attention to them.

DISCLAIMER: This is me writing about my opinion, which is inherently bias. If your opinion differs from mine that is perfectly all right, and I would be glad to hear what you think, however, please realize that I hold the right to reserve reading comments until Thursday.

The Legend of Zelda

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past was one of the first video games I had as a child. We got our SNES a few months before the N64 came out. (With a promise to our parents that we wouldn’t also want the N64 because it was newer… which turned out to be completely false later.) A Link to the Past has a quality to it that few other games have. I think it has an amazing replay value. Not necessarily because there are different choices you can make, there really are not any choices, or because it has a hard mode, it doesn’t, but it has a unique quality of game play that makes it enjoyable to pick up and play every now and then.

The game has a really neat feel, there is something about a bird’s eye view or a two dimensional world which makes the game a joy to play. The music quality is rather crummy, but the melodies and notation are amazing. The controls are simple which is a major plus because there is no learning curve to just sit down and play. Battling is easy and most the bosses can be killed amazingly quickly as long as you are capable of sustaining a bunch of damage. This is a game I love to sit down and just run through. The Ocarina of Time is also on my list of awesome games. Living in a three dimensional world, being able to rome around, ride horses, explore caverns and take on a number of side quests made this game an absolute wonder. The music was wonderful and the puzzles that were presented in the dungeons made the game a great challenge.

I was put off by Majora’s Mask and I was never able to get myself into Wind Waker, although the music for Wind Waker was awesome. Twilight Princess was a joy to play through, the Wii’s controller gave the game a whole new feel and it was wonderful. I loved the music and the gameplay. The thing I didn’t like, though, was the locked in feeling I was always having. There were blocked passages that littered the map, limiting progress to only one direction. Even when I had finished the game I didn’t feel like I had a direct route to everywhere I wanted to go. I also felt like there weren’t as many side quests and that there was a tremendous amount of unused territory on the map. Playing through the game again may give me a better chance to explore, but until then I don’t know if I’m entirely satisfied.

Metroid

I love metroids. I don’t know why, but I’m actually in the processes of trying to create a metroid screen saver wherein several metroids will roam around my screen guarding my computer from any intruders. (More on this on this later.)

As with Zelda, my first Metroid encounter occurred long after Metroid had been released. We borrowed the game from my cousins who are several years older than myself and after playing the game for awhile we succeeded in erasing their saved data by leaving the cartridge in the Nintendo for too long. Since then I have purchased my own copy of Super Metroid and I still find it to be one of my favorite games. I love the music, the control style and the gameplay as a whole. The maps and the world are fascinating and there is a great potential for exploring and searching out secret upgrades.

I am of the opinion that the Metroid Prime series was also very well done. The first is my favorite in terms of music, plot, etc, the problem I have with it is the control scheme. When I first played it I had not big problems with the control scheme, but since then I have played more first person shooter games which have the dual control stick scheme. That is, looking and walking are controlled separately whereas Metroid had then controlled together.

I played through Metroid Prime three or four times and have always been meaning to go back and play through it again, trying for a low percent walkthrough, or at least try to get the high jump boots first. (I did once and haven’t been able to since.) I have only played through the two following Metroid games once a piece, since school has not allowed much of a break to go back and play. As a result I don’t know them as well as I know the first one, which also makes me not like them as much.

Metroid Prime 3 is my favorite in terms of control style and the music was good too, but I find that the bosses were far too easy. The disadvantage I had with Prime 3 was that I had to put it down for a month due to school and so I had to pick up the game midway and try to remember what I had done. For this reason alone it is on my list of games I need to run through again.

Mario Kart

My life would not be complete without Mario Kart. I could play Mario Kart for hours, and for that matter, on occasion, I have. The racing style of Mario Kart is perfect, the items allow anyone to have a fair chance (well… sort of…) and the variety of tracks and battles keep things interesting.

Going back to the Super Nintendo it is hard to imagine ever enjoying the choppy screen of bad textures which holds a great potential for giving seizures. Nonetheless, I’ll always remember having battles at my friends house and getting that feather so I could jump over the bump into the water, where I could sit until someone chased me out.

Mario Kart for the 64 is still a game I love to play, despite the fact that multi-player has all sorts of sound related issues. The tracks were fun and the cheats were great when you could get them. Favorite track is Rainbow Road,of course (pun intended). Double Dash provided a whole new aspect of racing which I have found to be both a blessing and hinderance at times. I love racing on my own, but having a partner help is a special challenge that is fun to take on from time to time. The graphics are better, there are more courses and more drivers and the music is fantastic.

Kirby’s Avalanche

I don’t know what it is about Kirby’s Avalanche, but I just can’t play enough of it. My biggest problem is finding people to play against. Everyone I know either doesn’t find it nearly as fun as I do or gets tired of being pummeled multiple times over, despite the fact I am playing with a seemingly enormous handicap. The hard part is beating the computers, who have a reflex ability that far surpasses mine.

Donkey Kong

Until recently my family’s Donkey Kong collection consisted of only Donkey Kong Country 3 and Donkey Kong 64. I have finally been able to produce Donkey Kong Country 1 and 2 from ebay and am in the process of working through the second one with my brother. I love the scrolling style of this game, which is something that is not found anywhere anymore.Donkey Kong 64 was a great game as well and has some great music that I really don’t listen too enough. To be honest, I never actually got to beat the game because our game data was erased by a neighbor kid before we finished it and we never started it back up.

Others

I love MegaMan, but never actually bought any of the games. Only rented them and downloaded their soundtracks. Kirby always had great games and I’ve purchased the old ones for the Wii now. Smash Bros is a great series that has offered weeks of great fun with friends. Perfect Dark was by far the best first person shooter for the N64. Beetle Adventure Racing was pretty sweet and while I’m thinking about racing games the original F-Zero is on my list of games I enjoy to sit down and play every now and then. Star Fox is a great series too, but I haven’t played the newest ones a whole lot. I enjoy the occasional jaunt into Halo, but more often then not I’m just listening to their soundtracks. Final Fantasy VII is a classic and one of these days I’ll remember that I still have to fight the final boss. Sim City for the Super Nintendo is the best Sim City game ever except that our cartridge was rather fickle and we were never able to keep a city going for very long before the data was erased. Of course, I can’t leave out Mario World Series and Super Mario 64.

The Why

The big theme that I see running through these games are the soundtracks. Almost all the games I like have a great soundtrack, most have good gameplay and at least some sort of replay value. I just wish I had more time to play some of these old games to see if they are still as good as I remember.

Anyway, those are the games I like. What do you say?

My brother made the suggestion the other day that we sell a bunch of our old Game Cube games that we never play anymore. This would not only provide a small amount for the financing of more video games, but also clean up some shelf space in our gaming “cabinet.” So I agreed.

This meant that we had to look back on our games and find the ones that we didn’t play much. In the process we also got to see many games we once played for hours on end. Which meant we had to play some of them.

My brother started a game of Pikmin last night and after watching him play, I knew I had to, simply because I knew I could do better than he was doing. For those who aren’t familiar with Pikmin, they are small little plant-like creatures that spout from the ground, but when plucked out like carrots or oninons they they follow you around and carry things (like ants.) The premise of the game is that you are a small little “person” who’s spaceship crash-lands on a strange planet and you need the help of the Pikmin to get you ship’s parts back.

Anyway, I started up a new game last night around 7:00, thinking I would play for a short bit and then go play cards or watch a movie with my family. So I play through the first several days of the game, and then I take a look at my watch. It’s 9:50. I was utterly shocked, I had no idea that much time had just flown past. Granted, I was well into my game, but I totally lost track of time.

So I thought I would play a few more levels and be done. What seemed like a few minutes or so later my mom walks into the room and tells my brother to go to bed because it’s after 11. In fact, it’s closer to 11:30.

The last time I lost track of that much time I was asleep.

Part of the problem is that my room has no visible clock. All my clocks are found on things like my watch, my cell phone, my laptop, my stereo (if it’s in standby but then you have to press the clock button.) But I think more of the fact was simply the game I was playing.

With Pikmin, you are seriously multi-tasking. I usually had at least two groups of Pikmin doing things at any given time. One group would break down a wall and another group would carry back a part to the ship and I would have a third group fight a bunch of enemies so I could get another part. It’s really a multi-tasking game.

Right now, I’m on day 18 or so and I have all the parts but one. (For some reason [I don't remember why...] you are limited to 30 days to get all the parts. [There are 30 parts.] I got all the parts (but one) in 16 days and could have just gone to the final boss to get the last part, but I decided I would spend my remaining 13 or so days just getting as many Pikmin as I can.

I had to pry myself away from the game this morning to get some other stuff done, just hard to think how addictive that game is. Great game though, if you’ve got time to kill.

New t-shirt in the store today! I only wish I didn’t have to go through CafePress for my designs. (If there is anyone out there capable of printing shirts for me on a per-shirt basis (and who wants a piece of this sweet shirt action), drop me a line. I’d be willing to see if we could negotiate some sort of deal.)

Anyway, every Mario Kart fan in the world should be jumping at this shirt, which is to say: Everyone.

This Mario Kart inspired shirt features 3 balloons, one of which is floating away. The text below reads: “It’s all fun and games until somebody loses a balloon.”

If you’re looking to buy the shirt, follow this linked text to the store.

Enjoy!

I just put the Metroid 3 Soundtrack on my iPod, and then this morning when I hooked my iPod up to my computer, iTunes said my iPod was Corrupted… coincidence?