Mario's Picross

I'm not sure how I haven't yet talked about my love of the Picross series of games from Nintendo.  The concept is surprisingly simple, yet amazingly difficult to master.  There's a simple grid, anywhere from 5x5 to 15x15, and there are numbers indicating how many squares in each row or column need to be filled in.  A "15" would indicate the whole row is filled in, while a "0" means nothing gets filled in.  However, a "3 4" indicates there's a group of three and a group of four that need filling, but when you have fifteen squares to choose from, it can be difficult to figure out which ones are right and which ones aren't.

The later games in the series increased the size of the puzzles and even took them into the third dimension (because adding a z-axis to everything makes it harder), but having just wrapped up a recent play through of the original game, I figured I'd talk about it.

Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins

Every now and again I like to dust off (read: blow in the ports and stuff a cartridge in) my old Game Boy and see if I still remember how to play a game.  A while ago I took a look at one of my favorites, Nintendo World Cup, but while that was a fun way to blow off steam, when I think to my Game Boy days, there's one game that tends to rise up above the others as one I'd play over, and over, and over again, finding every hidden secret and memorizing every stage until I could probably talk my way through it like some twisted version of Lifeline.

But man, putting it in now and playing through it...this is one messed up game.

Review: Kirby's Return To Dreamland

If there's one thing I think Sony and Microsoft forgot about in the last (and probably current) console generation, it's that people still like to get together with friends, hang out together, and play games.  Nintendo, however, did not forget this, and regularly put out games for people looking to have fun with their friends and loved ones while planted in front of a television waggling sticks around.

To this, I say "kudos" to Nintendo.

One of the games I think I've had the most fun in this "wild and crazy co-op" world is Kirby's Return To Dreamland.

One hint: don't let someone who dies often play the 1st player.  That character tends to control everybody's fate.

Review: Super Smash Bros. (the 3DS one)

Here's a fun fact about video games: for a long time, whenever a huge title was going to come out to cash in on something (a movie, an event like the Olympics, a particularly popular pop culture character), you'd get a console release of a game starring them and you'd get a handheld video game system game put out as well.

The console game could be quite good sometimes.  Super Star Wars for the Super Nintendo was great.  Star Wars for the Game Boy...not so great.  (The Japanese game...well, we all remember that brief glimpse at "SCORPIAN VADER" right?

Most of the time the handheld game is, at best, a gutted version of the console game.  It only has a fragment of the memory and space for data, so you have to do what you can.

However, for ages I hadn't seen anything that looked like a quality fighting game on a handheld system.  This isn't anything new, this is my going alllllll the way back to some classic fighting games.

The only thing I took away from this game was that either Blanka was a woman
 the whole time or his mother looked like a prepubescent boy.

When I heard that Super Smash Bros. was coming to the 3DS...needless to say, I had my doubts that it would be good.  Maybe half the characters would show up, tops.  A dozen stages, tops.  No side games,  Cheaper voices, no story mode, it would be a cheap version of a great game.

Review: Mario & Luigi: Dream Team

I've talked about why I prefer Luigi over Mario before.  I won't go into all that detail again.  However, I will say this:  There was great potential in Mario and Luigi: Dream Team to truly let Luigi shine, but it feels a bit wasted somehow.  Luigi gets some of the best moments in the game, and yet he still feels like he's just there to "help" Mario.

It's still a ridiculously fun game, but let's get a bit more into it.