deKay's Lofi Gaming

Sonic Advance 2: SONIC BOOMED!

With Sonic Rush out next week, and this still not completed and Sonic Advance 3 still unplayed, I thought I’d best get my finger out and do something about it. So I completed it! Turns out the boss I was stuck on at the end of Sky Doobrie Zone wasn’t as hard as I’d previously thought. I just needed to be more careful. The next two zones were pretty easy too, as were the bosses. And then came the “XX” …

Sonic Advance 2

Blimey. It has been months since I last played this. Put it into my shiny new Game Boy Micro and had a play this morning. Seems I’m still stuck on Sky Canyon. Pah. Managed to get to the boss, but died. Had no lives left, so when I continued I had to do the whole of Sky Canyon again. After going through this cycle a few times (there are too many leaps-of-faith on Sky Canyon, which means UNAVOIDABLE DEADNESS) I …

Sonic Advance 2

Ah yes, a proper Sonic game. Not like that Sonic Heroes monstrosity, with its stupid 3D-ness and team-ness and Cream-ness and die-for-no-reason-ness. This is a normal 2D Sonic, and because of that, it works. Although it suffers from some generic 2D platformer traits (ice/fire/grass levels, etc.), it makes up for it by actually being fun and not crap. OK, so I died a few times, but unlike Heroes, I felt it was my fault, and not the game just being …

Top 10 Game Boy Advance Games

Ah, the Game Boy Advance. To many, a portable SNES without enough buttons to effectively be a portable SNES, and one with a screen invisible in all but the glow of a 100W lightbulb. That didn’t stop it from having arguably the best catalogue of games of any system, however, and with the lit screen of the GBA SP (further refined in the GB Micro), it became and remains my favourite handheld ever. And I loved my DS and 3DS a lot. …

Completed 2005

Pikmin 2(GC 12/01/2005) Zoo Keeper(DS 29/01/2005) Paper Mario 2(GC 30/01/2005) Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude(Xbox 07/02/2005) Sonic Adventure DX(GC 09/02/2005) Fable(Xbox 17/02/2005) Mr Driller: Drill Spirits(DS 17/02/2005) Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap(GBA 21/02/2005) Ribbit King(GC 27/02/2005) Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas(PS2 06/03/2005) Gitaroo Man(PS2 12/03/2005) Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon(Xbox 19/03/2005) Yoshi Touch & Go(DS 27/03/2005) Mario Golf: Advance Tour(GBA 28/03/2005) Metroid Fusion(GBA 08/04/2005) Bubble Bobble: Old & New(GBA 15/04/2005) Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars(GBA 18/04/2005) …

Sonic Unleashed Demo (360)

Oh Sega, how I once loved thee. Your happy Sonic games with their speed and platformingness and fun. Why hast thou forsaken me with this swill? Sonic Unleashed, like other recent Sonic games, is crap. Well, the demo is crap at least. Really crap. And there isn’t even a werehog stage to play, and the werehog stages haven’t exactly been top of reviewers’ lists of Ace Things About Sonic Unleashed. It’s like they took all the worst bits of all …

Sonic Advance 3

More play on this today, as I’m certain Sonic Rush will be appearing on my doorstep tomorrow, so I should get it out of the way first. It really looks gorgeous on my Game Boy Micro, and as I said yesterday, it’s much more fun than Sonic Advance 2 (which in itself didn’t seem to be a bad game, until I played this). Up to level 5.3 now, which is some kind of “digital world”, and has many nods to …

Sonic Advance 3

This is so much better than Sonic Advance 2. The levels are prettier, faster, and the game is more Sonic-like. It reminds me very much of Sonic 3 on the Megadrive. I’m enjoying it much more than Sonic Advance 2 as well, and I’m now up to World 3. The levels seem bigger too, and you can save after each Act rather than only after each Zone, making having to continue much less frustrating. Bosses are more standard Sonic bosses …

Sonic N

YES. I BOUGHT AN N-GAGE AND GOT SONIC N WITH IT. Stop mocking me. It’s just Sonic Advance. With either a squashed screen, or a chopped off screen – depending on your preference. And it’s jerky. And the sound is awful. And it’s not as good as Sonic Advance.

Irritating and Unnecessary Gaming Clichés

I’ve been gaming for a long time. This is obvious to anyone who has perused the rest of my site (the Gaming Diary and Museum both give clues to this). I’ve played a lot of games. Hundreds. Thousands, in fact. It would be naïve to assume that, having played so many games, gaming ideas are only ever used once, and so each game is an entirely unique experience. This is, of course, not true. Some things come up all the …

Emulation Newbies

New to the Emulation scene? Don’t understand terms like ‘roms’, ‘hardfiles’ and ‘disk images’? Want to get the best performance from your emulator? If so, then read on! This page is designed to aid people who are new to emulation, and to help you get the most from your emulator. It is by no means a complete HOWTO for emulation, but it will point you in the right direction. Due to the huge variety of type, styles and platforms for …

The art of ignoring video games

If you know me, or if you read this blog, or monitor my Usenet and forum posts, then you’ll know I buy a lot of games. Like, loads. I play a lot too: most days I put in an hour or so, longer at the weekend. This may appear to be a very long time to non-gamers, but you have to consider how much time I don’t spend watching TV, which is far more passive and couch potatoey. One look …