Category: Diary

I’m now up to almost $30,000 – even higher if you don’t count the money I spent on more stats upgrades. I need to enter some tournaments now, but I can’t seem to find any.

I’m back in the black! About $10,000 back in the black, in fact. I spent some of my Texas Hold’em winnings on bumping up my stats.

Hooray! I’ve started making money now, and even paid off $5000 of my loan! “Texas Hold’em” seems to be my best variation at the moment, and I’ve found that if my two dealt cards are not a pair, then I just fold. If they are, then I bet high, and after The Turn if I have a three-of-a-kind or two pairs, then bet really high – if not, “check” and hope 🙂 I have -$9000 now, which isn’t bad considering …

Yes, I know I’ve completed it. Someone emailed me asking how to defeat the end of game boss, and, since I couldn’t exactly remember, I had a go at it again. The game is certainly a lot easier than when I played it previously, for some reason! Anyway, you blow up the goop, eat the shadow Pac-men, fire arrows at the white thing, repeat all that three times, then draw Pac-Man after Pac-Man, quickly, to eat the black thing that …

The third of the games that arrived today. Played a couple of quick games, then went into the Career Mode and started losing money left right and centre. Rubbish. I even had to take out a loan for $10,000, most of which I have also lost. I did find the Darts and Air Hockey games though, but you don’t seem to make much money on them – $100 a time? No point!

I never had this game in either of its original incarnations on the PC Engine and the Megadrive, but remember wanting it when I saw a review of it. I think the UK version either never existed or was ub3r-l@@k-r@re. It’s Breakout with two bats and zombies, basically. And it is pretty good too, making use of the second screen to see further up the level as you progress. Graphics are pretty poor though – no improvement on the Megadrive …

This is one of three DS games that arrived from Play Asia for me today, and is the most bizarre of the three. It uses elements from Ribbit King, Hypersports and adds witches and weird floating bunny things. The aim is to throw your bunny thing along a path which has slopes, walls and drops on it. Get to the end (and not past the end) in fewer “strokes” than the other players, and you win. You throw by drawing …

I don’t know why, but I picked this up to play again this evening. It’s awful. And I hate it. I must like self-harm or something, I suppose. Anyway, I finished off a few levels, only to find I can’t go any further as I need more Lums. “You need 6735472 more Super Happy Seeds of Power to progress!” is one of my least favourite game mechanics, so you can imagine my joy that I had to go back and …

More levels on this one now. I’m up to World (or Page, or whatever) 4, and it has got quite tricky. Some of the “targets” I have to achieve (such as “Get 45 Coins!” or “Destroy 15 Enemies!” are hard as it is too easy to mess them up and then you have to start over. Not only that, but some levels have dual targets – get 60 coins and finish in under 75 seconds, or whatever. And Yoshi has …

What a poor game. The pre-PS1-era visuals don’t exactly help, but the collision detection, pop-up, clipping, low quality textures and awful camera basically kill it. That, and the fact it was almost half an hour between save points – not good for a handheld game really, is it? I set about the first level – well, the first bit before the first level and the first level itself. I knew Rayman DS was just a port, but I didn’t realise …

Ah yes, a trio of awful, shameless ripoffs on a handheld with a design like the PSP, but with the power of a VMU. Excellent. I am of course, talking about my new Gameking II. It’s like a Gameking, only shaped differently and has a screen light. Not that the screen light is a lot of good, as although it illuminates the screen pretty well, there is now a “backdrop” to the screen – a picture of some mountains – …

Yes! Already! I only got it yesterday, but it is already over and done. It seems World 7 didn’t have a boss at the end, and World 8 wasn’t really a level, just a quick run through a couple of easy things and then the boss – Drawica. Once his (or her, probably – it is a witch after all) patterns became clear, she was pretty easy. And then, as was pretty likely going from most games these days, there …

Really plowed through this today, and I’m now up to World 7 (out of, it seems, 8). In fact, I only stopped playing due to the battery in my DS coming close to running out. Things are getting somewhat harder now, with lots going on at once to worry about – things flying at you, electrified walls, spinning spikes and all sorts all at once. Luckily, there are plenty of restart points, and lives are easy enough to pick up. …

It’s like Yoshi Touch & Go, but with actual proper levels! And Kirby! The levels I’ve done so far (the first two worlds) have been pretty good – varied, nice graphics, but very easy so far. I’m only “4.7%” complete though, it seems, so I’m sure things will get harder. The bosses are a bit different to your usual games too. You have three to pick at the end of each world (the same three each time), and you have …

Ludicrous name aside, this is actually a pretty good platformer. See – it is possible to make decent 2D platformers in this day and age. It’s a shame the tilt sensor is either “on” or “off”, however – there’s no analogueness to it. And my brain doesn’t work backwards well enough to work out I need to tilt left to move everything right, and vice versa. But anyway. Completed all of the first two “worlds”, which involved turning into a …