May
May was more varied than previous months this year.¬¨‚Ć There was Eledees and Wing Island on the Wii, Crackdown, Lego Star Wars II and Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland on the 360, and the amazing Ouendan 2 on the DS, as well a plethora of 360 demos, XBLA games, and Wii VC titles. I struggled with the original NES Castlevania (on the VC) for a while too, and never did manage to complete it.¬¨‚Ć It’s just too hard!
June
Oh the horror! This month brought Kameo, perhaps the worst platformer I’ve played in oooh – ten years?¬¨‚Ć I had to play it though, as I knew it was crap and couldn’t understand how some other people loved it. Urgh. Thankfully, Forza 2 and Earth Defense Force 2017 came along and took the nasty taste away. June also played host to Retro Gaming Week, and all new games were temporarily binned. Highlights included Maniac Mansion and Shadowgate (NES), Adventures of Lolo (NES via VC), Fish! (Spectrum) and a trio of Saturn classics – Bomberman, Super Puzzle Fighter and Digital Pinball. In fact, my Saturn has been set up ever since.
July
TMNT (360) was the surprise of the month.¬¨‚Ć Firstly because it arrived with another order from Play when I hadn’t asked for it (or paid for it), and secondly because it turned out to be rather good. There was excitement when I made it to the top of the Missile Command (XBLA) leaderboards due to a bug in the Xbox dashboard allowing me and 14 other people to buy and play it two days early.¬¨‚Ć Carcassonne hit XBLA this month as well, and has been a fixture in the deKay household ever since. The rest of the month was taken up with the time-sink that is Puzzle Quest (DS) and more Forza 2. Oh, and the Super Random Saturn Festival Of Strange happened, where I spent a day playing obscure Saturn games. My PlayPal arrived in July too and I completed Sonic Triple Trouble on it. A busy month!
August
The first half of the month was all about the PS2, which doesn’t get a lot of play most of the time. Canis Canem Edit (or Bully to those not from these shores) and Vice City Stories being the two main titles there. The latter half of the month was more Resident Evil 4 (Wii) based. This was ground-breaking for two reasons – firstly, it was the first RE game I enjoyed, and secondly, it’s the only one I’ve ever completed. My GBA also got some play in August with the completion of Densetsu no Stafi 2.
