Posted on June 30, 2022
Strange Days
The date on the last honest-to-goodness CPB post I wrote (but never posted) was March 10, 2020, literally the day before the COVID-19 pandemic was officially declared. My posts had slowed down in general before that anyway, mostly because instead of wanting to talk about games, I just wanted to shut up and play them.
I am an introvert, so the pandemic was extremely weird in that it was equal parts concerning and comforting. I got to work from home for an extended period of time. I got to spend more time with my son as he grew from the toddler stage well into the “little boy” stage. I got to stay in my own little bubble for a while, and it was oddly reassuring. Cozying up on the couch to play games at night while the world was busy being a dumpster fire was quite nice.
On the other hand, there was this pretty serious-sounding illness out there, lurking. We had some at-risk family members living in different parts of the country, so we limited our interactions to stay healthy in the event things cleared up enough to see everyone. Same as it is right now, our mindset at the time was “we could maybe handle getting sick, but if our son or older family members get it, they couldn’t.” It wasn’t about us then, and it isn’t about us now.
COVID would undoubtedly kick our asses too – we’ve just had a “please let it be us, not them” attitude about it.
Thankfully, our provincial government seemed to have a good grasp of things (at the time), and it was only about a month and a half of complete lockdown before we were safe to see our families on a regular basis again. We had a great summer without many restrictions in place and very few cases in our area. We even went for a night out at a restaurant with friends at one point, something folks elsewhere could only dream of doing. Things beyond our little province’s borders were getting pretty wild, but we were good. Great, actually.
Much like the plot of Bioshock however, the situation became very *fluid*.
I’ve always been an anxious person about this and that – how I was doing in school, relationships with friends, family stuff, finances, that sort of thing. As the world shut down and went through some pretty significant social movements, I couldn’t help but feel antsy about what was happening. On top of needing to stay vigilant about COVID, I could see and feel the divide between folks on different sides of the political spectrum growing wider and wider. I won’t bother getting into which side I’m on because it’s irrelevant, but it was just a sad time in our evolution as a species.
As the year went on and things kept happening, it got to be a little bit heavy on the brain… I really had to take a step back, and take a breath.
We have to raise a child through these difficult times, when people are so incredibly divided on *everything*. On a daily basis, society feels like it’s on the verge of collapse, and we happened to bring a kid into world right in the thick of it. F*ck. We’re all in the same ocean.
We are often being asked to follow regulations that might not immediately make sense to us, and we have to navigate all these on the fly. I’m flexible, and I can accept that science can change and regulations along with it… but every little tweak has people up in arms, and some have *clearly* reached their boiling point with all this stuff. It’s tough to watch unfold. We’re all in the same ocean.
Within the confines of our bubbles, life is still happening. We live the same life we did pre-COVID – we bicker, we laugh, we worry about little things, we try to make things fun, we raise a child and deal with all the fun things that come with that, and we experience loss. We’re all in the same ocean.
My father-in-law passed away suddenly a year and a half ago, and there hasn’t been a day gone by that I haven’t thought of him. The most random thing will remind me – “oh yeah, that happened. Sh*t.”
The more I think about him passing away, the more I feel we’re lucky to have felt this grief. We’re lucky we had him for the time we had him, and we’re lucky to have had a good enough relationship with him that we are grieving. The alternative – no grieving at all, not even caring that he’s gone, which I’ve seen with other families – sounds truly awful.
So… we’re lucky. It hurts, but we’re lucky to feel that.
We’re all in the same ocean. We’re not all in the same boat – some of us have yachts, some of us have canoes with holes in the bottoms of them, and some of us are doing okay in our trusty old fishing boats. We’re all just riding the waves the best we can.
Over these past two years, I’ve tried to lean into my anxiety (if I’m calling it that), and to allow myself to learn from it. For instance, a while back I was asked to do a work thing where I’d be talking in front of a camera for about 5 minutes. Nothing too complicated – just an overview of my department, one that would be shown to the entire company. Not necessarily a huge undertaking, but it’s definitely something “big” I had never done before.
After I made a social media post saying “yay, I did a thing”, a co-worker from another department said “growth is always found outside of one’s comfort zone”. It was probably something he heard in a team building exercise, or possibly even a meme, but for some reason, it has stuck with me ever since.
I’ve mentioned it in a previous post, but six or seven years ago I had written a batch of scripts that I envisioned could be used as YouTube videos. I’m not sure if I was more intrigued about the idea of putting myself out there, or if I thought I could make a few extra bucks by monetizing my channel. Nevertheless, they were written, and when we unexpectedly became parents, they were pretty much forgotten… until last year, when I dug them up and thought about doing it again.
And why not? It’s a chaotic world out there, and if I’m ever going to delve into this, it might as well be now.
So, I wrote some more. Stuff that I wanted to talk about; Star Wars games, NASCAR games, games I liked that nobody else did, whatever. I’d put it all out there, and if it caught on, great. If it didn’t, who cares. Worst case scenario, it would be something my friends and I could all get in on.
I’m still waffling back and forth about doing it, though. I live in a small enough city that someone would inevitably recognize me, leading to who-knows-what. It’s not so much paranoia as it is just not wanting to have to deal with… all of that.
I might just ease myself into it with voiceover stuff, maybe I’ll appear on screen, who knows. Either way, I’m trying to use my experience with these past few years to grow a bit.
Time to write some more, and actually do this thing.
Posted on October 3, 2020
Rush rush got the yeyo?
It’s been quite some time since I’ve updated the ol’ CPB blog, but please, don’t worry (because I *know* you’re worried) – I’m still in the process of playing through my collection. Since April of 2018, I’ve played through 112 titles – 98% of them from start-to-finish – without deviating from the plan or going back to playing something I’ve played plenty of times in the past 10 years.
I’m playing through Grand Theft Auto III at the moment, and although I’ve played it a few times over the years, this is my first time recording gameplay. Once I’m done this time around, I’m done for 20 years at least!
I’ve purchased a few new titles here and there since this journey began, and my “grand total number” of games is currently at 974. I’ve touched on this before, but included among those 974 are a handful of compilations that contain quite a few “quick” games, most of which I’ll play together and in a single sitting.
Take this one, for example. I had never played an Atari game in my life until I popped this one in late last year, and the 80 Atari 2600 and arcade games were so quick and lacking in substance that it only took me two nights to play through them all.
So yeah, it’s 80 games, but it only counts as 1 on my list.
I recently got to thinking – counting all of these individual games in compilations, physically sitting on my shelf, or stored on console hard drives, I have the ability to play an insane number of games. I consider myself incredibly lucky!
So, on the nights where it’s been my wife’s turn to play her games and I get to do other hobbies, I started doing a thing; what if I took all those games – around 1,450 of them – and put together all the box art, console icons (for digital games), and arcade marquees for every single one of them… what would that look like?
So, in more-or-less alphabetical order (with some at the end that didn’t load right the first time)…
Posted on January 25, 2019
The Backlog Diary – Entry #2
I feel bad that it took this long to update my progress in playing through my collection, but then again, I’ve been breezing through it a bit quicker than expected. I also plan on cutting down on the length of each game’s overview, just so I can get to the point a bit quicker.
In any event, here’s what I’ve played since my last update!
Golden Axe (1989)
I have a love-hate relationship with beat ’em ups. I find most of them repetitive, and it usually takes a good story or enticing visuals and audio for me to really get into one. As far as Golden Axe goes, it’s pretty standard story-wise, but man – the music and surprisingly deep gameplay explains why this game was a hit for Sega.
Verdict: So much fun! Bodyslams all the way!! Sad I missed out on this as a kid.
Star Wars: Dark Forces (1995)
It’s easy to forget that this PC classic was ported to the PS1 in the console’s early days. Although Kyle Katarn’s exploits in Dark Forces were wiped clean by Disney doing away with the old Expanded Universe (good riddance), this “Doom clone” actually surpassed Doom in a few different ways – better sound, more complex levels and puzzles, that sort of thing. Makes sense, since it came out a couple years later… anyway, it has aged really well, even though having to use the PS1’s D-pad to play it has not.
Verdict: Genuinely surprised at how fun it still is, even without the analog sticks!
Mario Paint (1992)
It’s more of a distraction than an actual game, but I remember getting a decent amount of enjoyment out of Mario Paint as a kid. It was so cool to have a Super NES game that came with a mouse – I didn’t have a PC at the time, so I remember just the idea of playing a game with a mouse was pretty rad.
I don’t have much else to say about it, other than the fact that I can’t help but think about my grandfather every time I play it.
Verdict: It only took me about 45 minutes to play through all the modes, and the wonkiness of the ball mouse made it somewhat difficult to enjoy. Oh well – nostalgia.
Super Sprint (1986)
There really isn’t much to say about Super Sprint, other than it’s a top-down arcade racing game. You and three other F1 cars duke it out on 8 tracks, avoiding obstacles like oil slicks and tornadoes to try and take the checkered flag. Once you’ve won on the 8 courses, the game loops back to the first one with differently-placed hazards.
Verdict: It’s fun, but only until you get spun wildly off course by a tornado and have to figure out what path to take to complete a proper lap (by which time, it’s already too late).
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004)
I had started playing through this one a year before, mostly because
a) I wanted to experience it again, which I hadn’t done in 8 years or so
2) I now own the HD version of the game
D) I thought it would be worth a shot to try and get 100% completion.
I didn’t complete the game at the time, but I was able to get right back into the groove by watching what I had recorded. Even then, it wasn’t long before I realized that 100% completion was too big (and honestly too boring) a goal for me to achieve. Even though the A.I. had a way of screwing me over in weird ways while playing through the story, making me fail missions for reasons completely out of my control, I enjoyed going back and seeing what blew me away all those years ago.
Verdict: Still good – might have to knock it down a few notches on the Top 100, though.
Max Payne (2001)
I remember loving the heck out of Max Payne when it first came out, but this time around, it was a bit of a challenge. The graphics were dark in a way that no amount of adjusting made it nice to look at, and doing the Matrix-ey bullet-time thing over and over again got old fairly quickly. Back in the day, that was the coolest part of the game!
I also forgot about the dead baby scene. Not that I can’t separate the art and real life, but I definitely look at that differently now that I have a child of my own.
No wonder I like my Marios and Zeldas so much.
Verdict: I was definitely yearning for a light-hearted and colorful adventure by the time I finished the game.
Super Mario Sunshine (2002)
Going from Max Payne‘s darkness to Super Mario Sunshine vivid tropical vibes was just what I needed in terms of visual style, but the game’s controls were still enough to give me headaches.
My first attempt at getting all of the game’s 120 stars gave me an opportunity to see just how frustrating a gimmick FLUDD really is. A slight tilt of the analog stick in the wrong direction had the potential to veer you wildly off-course, which was partially also due to the camera’s tendency to have a mind of its own. Where you once thought you could jump to with confidence, a shift in perspective could throw everything out of whack.
One of the toughest gaming-related things I’ve ever done.
Verdict: Still a decent Mario game, and I’m happy to be able to say I got every Shine Sprite in the game.
Ice Hockey (1988)
Ice Hockey is one of the first NES games I ever played, but it’s not a game I had ever put much time into. After experiencing Blades of Steel, it was always tough for me to go back to such a basic, early NES title. Still, I went ahead and bought it on the Wii U’s Virtual Console, and I figured it was time to give it a serious go.
While it was definitely nostalgic experience, I just couldn’t get a hang of it. I tried a few different player combinations, but oddly enough the only team I managed to win with was the “All Fat Guy” team. I’m not sure what that says in terms of my skill with this game…
Verdict: Unfortunately, beyond looking at the classic box art, this one doesn’t do a whole lot for me.
Lego Marvel Super Heroes (2013)
This is your typical Lego game with lots of button-mashing action, tons of unlockables, and a cute sense of humor. It is based solely on Marvel characters and doesn’t refer to anything in the MCU, so the level progression just feels like it goes through the motions and tries to include as many characters as possible. Not a bad thing, but I was sorely missing those fun moments where you see a certain scene from a movie in Lego form.
There’s a bit of exploration that can be done in New York City between levels, but it’s not enough of a playground to really feel like anything you haven’t played before.
Verdict: Decent fun, but it’s really Lego Marvel’s Avengers that I’m looking forward to playing.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1989)
TMNT II is one of my favourite NES games, but I didn’t have a chance to play much of the arcade game it’s based on. The only time I can remember seeing the cabinet was at the ferry terminal in North Sydney, Nova Scotia, and then on the Marine Atlantic ferry itself. If I wasn’t going to Newfoundland to see family, I wasn’t playing the TMNT arcade game.
Now that I’ve had a chance to play through this game on Xbox Live Arcade, I can say that the NES game is far superior. Even with better graphics and audio, the arcade experience just doesn’t stack up. Much like how the hit detection in Turtles in Time Re-Shelled felt wonky, the same problem exists here (except thankfully not nearly as bad)… kinda weird.
Verdict: I guess I just needed to go to Newfoundland more as a kid – maybe I would have enjoyed this game a little more.
OutRun – Sega Classics Collection (2005)
OutRun is another Sega game I’ve heard a lot about over the years, but haven’t played at all. I’m terrible at all those old school racers like Rad Racer and so many others, and maybe that’s why it took me so long to finally play it.
The Sega Classics Collection is a compilation of classic games that have been improved upon graphically, and the version of OutRun on this disc feels a lot more like a modern racer as a result. That might be one of the reasons why I actually managed to make it to the end of the map to “beat” it, but really, it’s just the same game with dolled up visuals.
Verdict: 3D cars and smooth animation means you have better depth perception and can avoid other cars easier, making it more playable than the original*.
*I still haven’t played the original, but judging by one of the games you’ll read about in my next post, I’m pretty sure I’m not wrong.
Guitar Hero (2005)
The first music game on my list is the original Guitar Hero – the one that started the fake plastic guitar fad.
After getting used to the Rock Band guitar a while back, I found it really hard to go back to the “clicky” guitar. I usually keep the TV volume a little low to make sure I don’t wake up my son, and the clicking actually drowns the game out.
The tracks contained within each music game inevitably determines how good it is, meaning each one will hold a different meaning to everyone. This first entry helped open my eyes to a few new artists, but it wasn’t until the Rock Band era and DLC that this type of game really hit its stride.
Verdict: The quality of each cover is pretty impressive, but I’m really looking forward to getting to the Xbox 360 games that use the much quieter Rock Band guitar!
That’s it for this entry! I’m not even caught up to what I’m playing now, so I’m hoping my next post doesn’t take forever.
Posted on June 18, 2018
The Backlog Diary – Entry #1
I’m not expecting to post full reviews of the games I play over the next few years, but I do feel like I need to vent about some of them – some in a good way, some maybe not so much. For a chunk of these, it’s a good opportunity to play through them again and see if they truly are as good as I remembered, and if they are indeed Top 100 material.
In this first entry, I’ll talk about the first batch of games I’ve played through.
Let’s get to it…
Star Wars Battlefront II (Xbox One)
*That* Battle of Jakku!
The first Battlefront game of the new era was released in the prime of the Disney Star Wars hype train – that is to say, the month before The Force Awakens came out. Although the game was a bit lacking on the single player side (no campaign, aw), I spent a ridiculous amount of time playing online with my good friend Josh.
With Battlefront II, we got a decent and well-put together campaign (yay!), but everything else was just lacking that little something special. After all the hours I had put in with the first one, I was disappointed with the little things – the way you level up, the way you unlock abilities and cards, the way the multiplayer maps were laid out, and even the menu screens… none of it felt like it “gelled” nearly as well as the first one.
I put this one at the top of my playlist because I had an Xbox Live Gold account I needed to make the most of.
Verdict: Not bad overall, but really makes me long for the old days.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time Re-Shelled (Xbox 360)
Think this game looks fun?
Think again!
I won’t go over how fantastic Turtles in Time was on Super NES, because everyone should know that by now. Re-Shelled is unfortunately not nearly as good.
There’s quite a difference between moving flat sprites left/right and up/down in a given space, versus having a 3D-modeled character that is able to move 360 degrees. In a beat ’em up that requires you to hit moving things, it makes it a little trickier to make sure you’re facing in the right direction so you can actually connect with something. Because of this, it just feels like a button-mashing fest without much strategy involved.
Two more things stand out to me about this game. First, the colors seem washed out, making everything look rather plain and uninteresting to look at. Second, the music didn’t incorporate anything whatsoever from the original’s amazing soundtrack. Here were these great tunes that sounded amazing back in the day (and still hold up quite well), but didn’t get the remixes they deserved.
Verdict: Shame. Could’ve been something fun, but… it wasn’t.
Disney’s The Little Mermaid (NES)
Don’t remember this from the movie…but I also really don’t remember anything from the movie.
There are only five very short stages in this game, and it took me a little over 20 minutes to beat. Its reputation for being a little on the easy side is well-deserved, but I still somehow managed to die a few times during this play-through.
The only other thing I can think of commenting on is the plot and whether or not it’s actually the same as the movie – I don’t think it is, but then again it might be. I’m too lazy to Google it, which is pretty bad… I know Katie next door made me watch it with her a time or two when we were kids, but I must have mentally tuned out.
Anyhow, not much to say about this one, but only because it’s so short!
Verdict: Good music, tight controls, decent game!
The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse (Super NES)
*hums Chappelle’s Show R Kelly tune*
This one was in my Top 100, and while it’s still a great game, it might get knocked down a few notches. Not that it hasn’t aged well – it actually has! It’s just that I didn’t realize it suffers from the same problem as The Little Mermaid in that it’s quite short.
Not only that, but the system the game has for upgrading Mickey’s outfits throughout the game (which I once thought was a cool thing to be able to do) doesn’t really work. There are lots of branching paths and you can explore quite a bit to find all kinds of coins to try and pay for these upgrades, but the moment you get to the first shop, you realize that they cost way more than the amount you’ve found so far. You might be able to upgrade one of your suits later in the game, but that’s about it.
Stage 3 shop – still not enough coins for anything useful.
Other than that, I encourage you to at least give the game a try. It borrows a bit from other Capcom games, the controls are great, and (although unrelated to the game itself) the issue of Nintendo Power with this game on the cover is probably my favourite issue of any magazine, ever.
Mega Man boss design contest FTW!
Verdict: Still enjoyable!
Vs. Excitebike (Wii U Virtual Console – Famicom Disk System)
One of the few different-looking things from the first game – the title screen.
I was looking forward to trying this one out, even though I knew it was just a version of Excitebike that had multiplayer added into it. I loved the original, so I was interested in seeing what other gameplay elements they changed for this quasi-sequel.
There’s a solo qualifying session before each “main” multi-competitor event – too slow, and you’ll miss the big race – so that’s pretty neat. The music is completely different than the original’s, which is fine I suppose. Oddly enough, there’s music playing during the races this time around, and while it’s not all that bad, it’s nothing special either.
There’s also a decently fun mini-game between events that breaks up the monotony a bit. As interesting as it is, it feels cheap. Not sure what other word to describe it… it just… well, look at it.
See what I mean?
Overall, the main portion of the game feels a bit more difficult than the original. While still fun, I enjoyed the first one’s “pick up and play” feel as opposed to this one’s slightly more hardcore and less forgiving nature.
Verdict: Only for Excitebike super-fans… which I am, but even then, it’s nothing overly spectacular.
LittleBigPlanet (PlayStation 3)
Ahhhhh!!! Run!!!!
I was already in the process of recording Battlefront II when I decided to do this whole “play all my games” thing, so LittleBigPlanet is technically the first “big” game to show up on my list.
I got to the second set of levels when my recording issues popped up again. They’ve been the source of many headaches since I’ve owned my elgato GameCapture HD, but for the most part it has worked pretty well. It all boils down to how powerful my laptop is versus what my recording quality settings are, so I had to scale things down a bit… but it still looks pretty good.
Ugly. Thankfully, it’s (mostly) been figured out.
This is still an extremely fun game, but the physics have a way of kicking you in the nuts. For instance, this car you’re supposed to zigzag through narrow hallways with bounced wildly, and it took me a few minutes to un-wedge it from this position…
…which sucked, considering the vehicle is needed to progress to the next part of the stage.
These sumo-wrestling boss guys at the end of one of the game’s later stages bounce high in the air, and the intent is for you to pop the ball on top of their heads. Well, one of them happened to bounce wildly enough to knock the other one upside-down – if this happens, there’s no way to flip him back upright, because he doesn’t have anything for you to grab onto (like the above-mentioned car does).
There was literally no way for me to defeat the one on the right in order to move on, and the level had to be restarted.
So yeah, although I still greatly enjoy the game’s aesthetic, controls and overall gameplay, it was the little things like that that had a tendency of souring the experience a bit for me.
Verdict: Still Top 100 material!
The Simpsons: Hit & Run (Xbox)
Showing a retired character some love…
This is actually the first time I’ve ever made use of the Xbox 360’s ability to play original Xbox games. Backwards compatibility has always been one of my favourite features on modern consoles, so it’s somewhat surprising that it has taken me this long to take advantage of it with one of my favourite consoles of all time.
Although this game is basically a GTA-inspired Simpsons game, the gameplay is (rightfully) a lot more arcade-like – cars handle quite easily, characters have the ability to jump quite high, and the game generally doesn’t take itself seriously. There’s a bunch of stuff to collect and places to explore and interact with, but by the end of the game, it’ll all start feeling a bit repetitive.
Things usually consist of driving from point A to point B, talking to someone, racing someone, etc. As the game progresses, things get more challenging in a frustrating way; timers are set shorter and shorter and the room for error decreases… traffic also has a way of screwing you up, even when you think you’ve planned ahead enough to detour.
Verdict: The free-roaming aspect is fun, and there are tons of references to old episodes… I just wish the missions were a bit more varied.
South Park (Nintendo 64)
Les Claypool in 64 bits – the best part of the game!
Of all the games in my list, this is definitely the one I was looking forward to the least. When I started playing it, I realized that maybe it wasn’t as downright terrible as I once thought.
Sure, the graphics were foggy as hell and the amount of pop-up was insane. The turkeys’ non-stop gobbling and evil clones’ derping was pretty hard on the brain, and the Turok-like controls are clunky to go back to after all these years… but hey, at least it was playable!
Then I got to the second half of the game.
Fumbling with the controls well enough to beat enemies that moved mindlessly in a straight line didn’t cut it anymore. I had to run, gun and be extra precise with increasingly limited ammo. I had to do some tricky platforming to reach more powerful weapons and health drops, and I’d often just give up after constantly failing to jump a gap to get to them.
Just getting to the final boss was painful – I ran out of ammo for my big guns on the penultimate stage, meaning I only had the drops the final stage had to offer (not many). I died so many times, and my head just couldn’t handle the extreme concentration it took to beat the fast-moving enemies… so I cheated.
I felt dirty doing it, but really, it was the only possible outcome.
Verdict: So glad that’s over with.
That’s it for now – I won’t post the upcoming list of games, simply because I like being surprised by what comes next. Posting it here would ruin that, I think.
Until next time!
Posted on April 13, 2018
Out With One Thing, In With Another
A few years ago, I got the idea to turn some of my past CPB blog posts into videos that I’d upload to my YouTube channel. Certain users I watch on a regular basis were quite inspiring to me creativity-wise, so I turned a handful of older posts into video-friendly scripts and even recorded some of the video footage I was going to use. I also started recording my gameplay every single time I played something, and now, very rarely will I ever play without recording it – even if I have no immediate plans to use the footage.
You just never know what you might get on tape-which-I-call-it-even-though-there’s-no-actual-tape!
Not long after I started getting things together and buying the materials I needed to make these videos possible, I became a father. What little time I thought I’d have to do this pretty much went out the window. I had to become a real adult pretty quickly, and this YouTube scheme of mine seemed like pipe dream.
Sorry, Samson Meteor. Your shiny butt will have to wait.
“Not the end of the world”, I thought. “I’ll just put it on the back-burner until Nathaniel’s old enough. Maybe it’ll even be something we can do together! Wouldn’t that be fun…”
As time has gone on, Nathaniel has himself developed an obsession with video games – well, video game characters, at least. He can easily name Mario (“Nindo”), Luigi (“Wihhi”), Goomba, Bob-Omb, 1-Up (“Umupp”), Toad, Koopa, Bullet Bill, Mega Man and a handful of others if you show him an image and ask who they are.
He loves them and talks about them so much that even I am like “dude, let’s play with something else… look, here’s Peppa Pig. Dora’s over here all alone in her pickup truck. Vroom-vroom?”
One of the things he LOVES to do is go into the room where all my games are. He’s not really allowed to go in there, but if he’s tired and cranky (which happens, but not that often) or if he’s just been a well-behaved kid (which he is), I’ll go in there with him on my lap and just sit amongst my games and other nerdy stuff. We chill out in there, breathe it all in… and he’s content. He hates leaving the room, but it’s nice and quiet while we’re in there.
He particularly enjoys holding the Amiibos which, very much to his credit, he knows are *not* normal toys to be played with.
Thank goodness for that, too.
As I was sitting in that room with him one day, I realized that this collection held pretty much every single game I had ever wanted and more. It also dawned on me that there’s a large amount of them that I haven’t had a chance to play yet, and that needed to change.
How could I possibly shift my gaming-related duties to a series of YouTube videos, re-playing games I’ve already played countless times to make these videos, when I can’t even tell you anything about 30-ish percent of my collection?
“Is Castlevania 3 any good?”
“I have that on Wii U Virtual Console!”
“Yes, but is it any good?”
“…I also have Halo: Reach, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, Ufouria: The Saga, Ico/Shadow of the Colossus on PS3, Star Fox Assault, Silent Hill, Metal Gear Solid 4, Syphon Filter 2, The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, Uncharted 4…”
“And are any of those any good?”
“…I’ve… never played any of them…”
I have to admit this particularly embarrassing fact about myself; every single time I think “OK, I’m going to play a game tonight” and go into my game room, I almost panic when I’m trying to pick out a game. I have so damn many of them, and I worry that if I pick one, I’ll somehow make the wrong choice.
“Decidophobia”, the fear of making decisions, is apparently a very real thing. That’s me every time I decide I want to play a game.
But what if I didn’t have to make that choice? What if I took all the games in my collection and spread them out evenly by console – as evenly as I possibly could, taking into consideration that I could potentially buy more games relatively soon – and let a randomly-assembled list determine what I played next?
First, I needed a “true up” of my collection. I track what games I own over at RFGeneration.com, and I needed to make sure that truly contained everything. Once that was done, I then exported that list to a CSV file… and then I started pruning.
– I took out the entries that were hardware, because… well, those aren’t games.
– I took out the portable games that weren’t playable on a television, and thus not recordable (sorry, DS and 3DS games – I have no way to play you on the big screen yet). Thankfully, I have DS games on my Wii U’s Virtual Console, and my Retron 5 plays all iterations of the Game Boy, so those made the list.
– Compilations with relatively quick arcade-style games (i.e. Atari Anthology, Capcom Classics Collection Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, Taito Legends, etc.) would count as a single game on my list due to the games on them mostly being “distractions” that I wouldn’t be spending much time on. “Full” games (such as the Genesis games on Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection) would be counted individually. Essentially, I wouldn’t consider 3D Tic-Tac-Toe on Atari Anthology to be a game I’d play for much more than a few moments, whereas Vectorman as part of Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection would count as an actual, real game… know what I’m saying?
– I took out duplicates, usually leaving the higher-def versions (i.e. taking away Wind Waker on GameCube, but leaving Wind Waker HD on Wii U)… however, if a game was drastically different on a different console, it stayed on the list. I have a decent amount of early Mortal Kombat games to play as a result.
– I weeded out the RPG’s I didn’t want to play… for now. I have Final Fantasy on the NES Classic and Final Fantasy III on the Super NES Classic that I really feel the need to at least try, but the Phantasy Star and Shining Force series (that are part of the Sonic compilation mentioned above) will have to wait. Maybe if I *really* like the FF games, I’ll give them a go.
– Since buying my elgato Game Capture device three years ago, I’ve played and recorded 32 games of varying lengths – from Super Mario Land to Conker’s Bad Fur Day to Metal Gear Solid 2 to the Xbox One version of Halo, and everything in between. I’m done with those for now, so I took them off the list.
– I had recorded some games in those three years where, for one reason or another (usually laptop performance issues) the recording had messed up. There weren’t many, so I put them at the top of the list to play through first and get out of the way.
– For series that I hadn’t played all the games yet, I made sure to put them in order of release. For example, I don’t particularly care what order I go through all the Mario or Star Wars games I have left to play, but I made sure my God of Wars, Gears of Wars, Medal of Honors of Wars and Metal Gear Solids of Wars were all played in the order in which they were released.
– There are three genres I spread out evenly throughout my list (instead of including them among the games I spread by console) – sports games, music games and racing games. I wanted to parse them out in a way that it would break up whatever monotony I might be experiencing from playing everything else.
In the end, I had a number – 857. That was the number of games that I absolutely had to get through. No excuses.
Then I had to compile the list – how would I get that “randomness” I wanted so that I wouldn’t have to decide what I was going to play next?
Well, like this – take the Xbox 360, for example. I have 72 Xbox 360 games, the most on any individual console I own. If I have 857 games, that means one Xbox 360 game every 12 games. It’s not a perfect method, but after adding each console’s games to the list in that fashion, it actually mixed them up pretty well!
The consoles are color-coded, because *of course* they are.
*Note – if we’re counting the games on my compilation discs that were all lumped into a single title, then the actual number of games I have to play is 1222.*
So yeah, that’s pretty much it. My intent is to play through all of them and update the blog every few games or so with quick thoughts about what I’ve played.
I’m extremely excited about this, and very interested to see how long it’ll take me to go through the entire thing. My guess would have to be… 15 years, give or take. Maybe more if life gets hectic, maybe less if Nat ends up helping me (my hope is that he will).
Good times lie ahead.
My body is ready.
Posted on January 14, 2018
My Top 10 Mario Worlds!
When I was a kid, I had it in my head that if I dug a tunnel going underground in our back yard, it would somehow open a portal and bring me to the Mushroom Kingdom. I might have gotten the idea from Little Monsters, that movie with Fred Savage and Howie Mandel where there’s a portal to another world under the kid’s bed, but I totally believed I could explore Mario’s world in person if I dreamed big enough…
Wow. I haven’t seen this in years. Looks awful!
The original Super Mario Bros. obviously blew our minds, but it still came at a time when games looked pretty simple – you really had to use your imagination to get a feel for what the world would look like from Mario’s perspective. The levels either happened at day or night, and although World 5 tried to look snowy, everything felt pretty similar from level to level.
Except 6-3… that stage was pretty unique.
Super Mario Bros. 2 introduced themed levels, and Super Mario Bros. 3 had individual worlds with maps, identities and names of their own. From then on, every time you played a new Mario game, you didn’t know what to expect.
Now, in the name of setting rules for the countdown, these are areas from Mario adventure games only, meaning platformers and RPG’s. I’m also only taking into consideration worlds that are more than one stage long. There are some fun single-star areas in Super Mario 64 and both Galaxy games, but they’re not really themed worlds in the sense I’m talking about.
Sorry, Princess.
Your Secret Slide didn’t make the cut!
I’ll also leave the Star and Special Worlds out of this one; they’re basically Bonus levels anyway, and as awesome as they are, they blow the majority of this list out of the water. As such, the levels on here are just the normal ones!
Without further ado, here are my 10 favourite Mario Worlds!
Let’s-a-go!
Read More
Posted on July 12, 2017
“Here’s where I live – you’ve never heard of it. Trust me.”
See what I mean?
I’m not quite sure where you’re reading this blog from, but chances are pretty good that I’ve at least heard of that place. Whether it’s somewhere obvious like Vancouver or New York City, or perhaps a smaller city in South America or Europe, I will more than likely have some general idea of where your city (or at least your country) is on the map.
Growing up in Fredericton meant that whenever I spoke about where I was from with people from abroad, they would more than likely say “where is that?” For example, I’m a member of an auto racing discussion forum and I have a few of them as friends on Facebook, and I’m willing to put money on them never having heard the name “Fredericton” or “New Brunswick” in their lives before knowing me.
No, not *that* New Brunswick.
So because of this, whenever I hear of a celebrity that has made the rounds in our area, a successful musician that has miraculously chosen to play in our small province, or even a comedian\TV host performing a gig and not really knowing where the hell she was (I’m looking at you, Whoopi Goldberg), it really is quite a surprise when I find out someone famous knows where New Brunswick is – never mind little old Fredericton.
And in a strange round-about way, that makes me think of Street Fighter II.
I know that’s an oddly specific thing to link to a game, but bear with me.
Street Fighter II
These days, you barely even bat an eye when they release the latest Ultra Hyper Mega Super Street Fighter II Turbo: HD Championship Edition. It’s quite amazing that a variation of a game released 26 years ago came out just a couple months ago on Nintendo’s Switch – that’s five console generations later, for crying out loud!
Street Fighter II 8
I was in Baie-Sainte-Anne on one of our regular trips to see family when I finally decided I should give Street Fighter II a chance. I had brought the latest issue of Nintendo Power with me, which featured Guile on the cover, and the resounding opinion about the game was that it was one for the ages, and that games would never be the same again.
I eventually rented it, and really enjoyed it. Each character had their strengths and weaknesses, the graphics were quite nice and of course, the music was incredible. Once you got into the later stages of a single player game and reached the final four – Balrog, Vega, Sagat and M. Bison – there was this mysterious allure about them that made it so satisfying to beat them… and wouldn’t it be amazing to be able to play *as* them, somehow? Like, with a Game Genie or something?
It was in the pages of (you guessed it) Nintendo Power that I learned I wouldn’t have to wait long at all for that experience.
To say I was excited to see this image with Balrog as the player character would be an understatement.
I bought into the Street Fighter II Turbo hype. I wasn’t the best player in the world, but by golly, they were going to release it again, and this time, it would be “complete”! Score!!
My good friend Josh ended up getting it that year for Christmas, and although we did have quite a bit of fun with it, it was completely overshadowed by the other game he had gotten that year – Mortal Kombat on Super NES. I didn’t know or even care that the version of MK we played was censored – I just knew that it played smoother, and was way more mature than Turbo.
It would have to take a lot more than playable boss characters to lure me away from my new favourite fighting game…
I thought I was excited to see that SF II Turbo was a thing. I didn’t even know this was coming out until I saw it at the arcade!
Around the time both Mortal Kombat II and Super Street Fighter II hit arcades, I developed a fascination for hockey. I played so many hours of street hockey in front of our house in those days, and I was starting to watch NHL games on TV more often. Up until then, my knowledge of professional sports was limited to Major League Baseball and the Toronto Blue Jays, who were on fire in those days.
I was particularly keen on watching Montreal Canadiens games. I stopped short of ever calling myself a Habs fan, but their AHL affiliate was based in my home town. I got to see several games over the years with my father, but I also got to tag along with my friends Michael and Brian across the street. On several occasions after the hockey game was over, we’d go to the mall to plunk down some quarters at the arcade.
Good times were had… for the most part.
Frederictonians from 1990 to 1999.
The Fredericton Canadiens were the Montreal Canadiens’ “farm team”, which basically meant any player having the intention of playing in the big league had a stint in Fredericton. Because of this, it was an awesome way to see some fantastic hockey players come through the ranks on their way to the NHL.
Guys like Donald Brashear, Patrice Brisebois and Darcy Tucker scored quite a few goals as “Baby Habs”, while Jose Theodore would end up being a pretty popular goaltender in Montreal. It was quite something to turn on Hockey Night in Canada and see those exact same players making an impact on the big stage.
But there was one player whose moves on the ice were on a whole other level than what our little city had ever seen before. As for his moves off the ice, they scored an actress from the biggest show on television at the time.
Pavel and Valeri Bure at the 2000 NHL All-Star Game.
NHL standout Pavel Bure had incredible speed, an insane amount of skill and scored some big goals in his career. During his time with the Vancouver Canucks, Pavel earned the nickname of “The Russian Rocket”, which was a nod to the original “Rocket”, Montreal Canadiens’ star Maurice “Rocket” Richard.
On the opposite end of the country here in Fredericton, Pavel’s little brother Valeri was turning just as many heads as Pavel was – his nickname came to be “The Russian Pocket Rocket”, a play on the nickname for Maurice Richard’s younger brother, Henri. Whenever he had the puck, you could feel the crowd buzzing, waiting for that next electrifying move that would inevitably end with a puck hitting the back of the net.
He was a rising superstar that was making waves, and I absolutely couldn’t believe that he was playing in *my* home town. How in the world could we ever have gotten this lucky?
Even more baffling was the fact that Bure’s girlfriend at the time lived here in Fredericton with him. Who was his girlfriend, you might ask?
DJ Tanner herself – Candace Cameron of Full House fame.
My sister almost literally bumped into her at a local grocery store once – she went to get a quart of milk, turned to walk away, and then almost slammed into poor DJ. They apologized to each other and it gave my sister just enough time to realize it was Candace Cameron, but that was the end of it. The whole family was amazed at her story about the encounter, as funny as that may sound now.
It was just so surreal that someone from Hollywood even knew where Fredericton was, much less called it home (pretty much).
In any case, there was one night where Bure scored a couple goals, including one on a breakaway (the best kind), Donald Brashear got in a fight as he quite often did (which the crowd loved), then yelled something snide to a fan in the seats as he was walking to the dressing room (which got another roar from that section) and the Baby Habs won the game. Afterwards, we hopped in the car and went to Electronic Avenue at the Regent Mall.
Super Street Fighter II had been out for a while by then, and I still hadn’t really given it the time of day. For the longest time, every time I’d go to the arcade there would always be a huge throng of people around it, and I wasn’t interested enough to wait for my turn. Besides, I sucked at it enough that it would probably just be a waste of quarters anyway.
That night after the hockey game though, it was late enough in the day that there was almost nobody playing SSFII. I remember playing a few games against Mike and Brian as T.Hawk and Fei Long before calling it quits. Aside from the new characters and stages, it was still same ol’ Street Fighter, so Mike and I started walking around, looking for something else we could play.
As we turned the corner to go down another aisle of games, I clumsily rolled my ankle and stumbled into the closest cabinet. I was slightly embarrassed, but we both laughed and kept walking.
We stopped at another game, and we noticed that an arcade employee had started following us. We just quickly glanced at him, not thinking too much of it, but the guy said to us: “You kids better keep walking.”
Mike and I were both like… “What? Why? What did we do?”
“I saw you guys earlier and I know what you’re up to. You guys are going around checking the bottoms of the arcades for loose quarters.”
He was basically accusing us of stealing, which was both preposterous and terrifying at the same time – especially if you know me and how much of a goody-good I was growing up. To have this overly ambitious employee accuse me of theft at one of my favorite hangout spots was infuriating, and I didn’t have anything to say to the guy.
Michael – who was two years older than I was and always (mostly) stuck up for me – pretty much laughed in the guy’s face and told him off, and I thought that was the end of it for us and that we’d be banned for life.
“No more Electronic Avenue for me! I’m cooked!”
Luckily, the guy let it go and we didn’t get booted. We just turned around and joined Mike’s older brother, Brian, who was playing Mortal Kombat II with Chris, who was Mike and Brian’s older sister’s boyfriend………. are you following me so far??? 😉
Anyway, I stood there and watched them play in a daze because of what had just happened. What in the world had I done to———-the stumble. When I stumbled into the cabinet, he must’ve thought I was looking for quarters! At least, that’s what I guessed. It made sense in my head.
I still don’t know for sure if that’s what did it, but I never forgot that night, and I would always think about it whenever I went back to Baby Habs games. Even now, looking at old clips of the team in action, I think of that messed-up night I tried Super Street Fighter II for the first time.
Here are Valeri and Candace on an early date at the Aitken Centre… I still remember those orange wooden seats, and my butt hurts just thinking about them.
Posted on September 19, 2016
Top 10 Video Game Beginnings!
I recently started playing The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD, which marks my second time through the game. I originally bought the Wii version at launch, and for the most part, greatly enjoyed the overall experience.
Once I started it back up again, however, I was reminded of just how much I didn’t like the beginning of the game. I never found fishing all that fun or particularly well done in Ocarina of Time, so to have it be one of the things you *had* to do in the first few minutes of this game was just… ugh.
Just… drop… you stupid fishing lure…
Thankfully, you get past that, go through a few more tedious chores, and the game eventually gets going in the proper direction.
This got me thinking, though – what video games had the BEST beginnings? Whether it’s a quick intro or a prologue of some kind, that first segment of the game really has to keep you enticed enough to keep playing. There have been some fantastic introductory sequences throughout the years, and instead of dwelling on TPHD’s mediocre start, I started thinking about the great ones.
So without further ado, here are my ten favourite video game beginnings of all time! Read More
Posted on August 23, 2016
You’re right here, in my sights.
Everything you’ve ever heard about having a child and how much time you spend taking care of them is 110% true. While my son Nathaniel is the greatest thing to ever happen to us, it has been pretty much non-stop for my wife and I since June 11. We wouldn’t have it any other way, but still, whoa.
I have managed to get *some* gaming in, however.
My least favorite dungeon in the game; the Thieves’ Den!
(Still fun, though.)
I was in the mood for a thorough play-through of A Link to the Past, so I popped the kid in his swing and played (and recorded) one of my favorite games of all time. He was only a few weeks old when this was taken, but I did catch him watching the screen intently at some points.
In any case, I am still working on the YouTube series I planned on doing a while back, and I’m also working on some posts for the blog. I most definitely intend on keeping the CPB alive!
Posts soon! I think\hope!
Posted on January 19, 2016
New memories: sometimes, they’re just as awesome.
This game has been out what… just over two months? How could I already have an unforgettable memory associated with it?
Well, a lot has changed in regards to Star Wars since Battlefront II was released on PC and consoles back in 2005. Of course there was the sale of the franchise to Disney, the creation of new movies – pretty much one a year for the next few years (!!!) – the well-established Expanded Universe no longer being canon, and one of the biggest heartbreaks, LucasArts being shut down.
But fear not! EA and DICE were there to pick up the slack, and they promptly announced Battlefront III! Well, kinda – it would just go by Battlefront, but still, it was frickin’ BATTLEFRONT!!! It was coming back, baby!
Actual game footage was a bit slow to pour in at first, but it became obvious at E3 2015 that this would be a pretty-looking game, to say the least.
But would it be any good?
Also, what in the world is Endor-Luke doing on Hoth?
Where’s Hoth-Luke???
On November 17th – almost ten years *to the day* that Battlefront II came out – Star Wars Battlefront was released for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC. Having just purchased an Xbox One not too long before, and with more friends of mine owning that console than a PS4, I went ahead and picked up that version.
I obviously started with the single player stuff with the intent of treating this as a game I would play by myself after a long day of work. You know, to unwind. Unfortunately, it wasn’t long after playing through a few missions that I realized Battlefront was mainly built as an online multiplayer experience.
There are eight solo and co-op “missions” as well as four “survival” rounds spread across eight maps for you to play offline – but that’s it. Even then, the missions are quite literally all about killing AI with no other objectives in sight. The lack of anything containing a story, especially considering the Star Wars saga is so story-driven, was quite disappointing.
I quickly realized that if I was to enjoy Battlefront for what it was, I had to go online. For those of you who know me and how I feel about multiplayer games – specifically shooters – that was a pretty big deal.
I held my nose, bought myself an Xbox Live Gold subscription, hopped online and hoped for the best…
Well, to say that I’m glad I did that would be an understatement. I have played the various multiplayer modes like crazy, and although I’ve stuck to some more than others, they all have their merits.
So many modes, so little time.
Drop Zone – claim and defend randomly-dropped escape pods (one at a time) in hectic 6 vs. 6 action. First team to claim five pods wins the round.
Droid Run – 6 vs. 6 like Drop Zone, but with three Gonk Droids slowly roaming the battlefield. Hold all three for 20 seconds, or hold more than the other team when time runs out to win the round.
Fighter Squadron – 10 vs. 10 battle in the skies with a very Rogue Squadron-like feel to it. Incredibly fun, especially when you get on a roll or manage to snag a token to pilot Slave 1 or the Millennium Falcon.
Heroes vs. Villains – each round, three players on each team of 10 are randomly assigned the role of a Hero. If you’re on the Rebel side, Luke, Han and Leia each have unique and extremely powerful abilities. If you’re with the Imps, Vader, Palpatine and Boba Fett get the call… the first team to eliminate all three of the opposing side’s “celebrities” wins the round, and the first team to win five rounds wins it all.
Supremacy – 20 vs. 20 battle for capture points, probably the most similar mode to the classic Battlefront games.
Walker Assault – my most-played mode by far. 20 vs. 20 battles where Imperial AT-AT’s slowly make their way to escaping Rebel transports on the opposite end of the map. As the Rebels, defend beacons long enough to have Y-Wings swoop down to take out the AT-AT’s shields for a limited time. The longer you defend the beacons, the more Y-Wings come to disable the AT-AT’s shields, giving you more time you have to damage them. As the Imperials, defend the AT-AT’s by deactivating the beacons as best you can, then suppressing any fire the Rebels might throw at you.
Decent round, but I didn’t do as well as a poopsicle.
So yes, to say that I’m having a blast with Battlefront so far would be an understatement. The crazy part is that I’m not nearly as good as most of the strangers I play against! At the same time, the game does a good job of not making you feel like a piece of garbage for having a terrible Kill to Death ratio. By sticking to mission objectives (such as capturing droids, damaging AT-AT’s, etc), you can accumulate tons of points and help your team a lot!
Sometimes I suck!
Sometimes I snag the Millennium Falcon and go to town!
(My old friend Josh still manages to get more kills, however…)
OK, so as far as unforgettable memories go, this one ranks right at the top. Like, major-big. Huge.
My wife Anita and I met on June 16, 2006, and when it came to choose a wedding date five years later, we thought June 16 would be as good a date as any. The courthouse here in town only does weddings on Fridays however, so we set June 17, 2011 as our date.
No big deal – it would just be two days of anniversaries instead of one!
‘Twas a great day!
As is usually the case, people started asking us pretty much right away when we would start having kids. It’s something every couple inevitably goes through when they get married – heck, some people even go through it before they get married, and even when they’re single.
We started trying to have a child about a month after getting married. As time went on and we were unable to conceive, we naturally began to wonder what the deal was. Was there something wrong? Was it me? Was it her? Are we healthy?
We started going to various appointments, taking tests, doing all the things that people wanting to be parents will do. To make a long story short, we ended up being told it would be very unlikely that we would be able to have a child by traditional means.
We could either adopt or try various means of fertilization or try to improve our chances with drugs… but because we are the way we are, we wanted to do it normally.
Besides, with our luck, we’d take fertility drugs and end up with quadruplets right off the bat!
The decision to let things be was a tough one, even though it was one we were eventually okay with. As time went on, we kept getting the questions – “when are you two going to start a family?” “Shouldn’t you be ready to have kids by now?” “I saw you in that picture with a child, and it looked really good on you!”
Any progress we would have made with *not* being bummed out about our situation would take a bit of a step back. We eventually made complete peace with it just being her and I for the rest of our lives, and it was a HUGE relief for both of us when we could finally just let things be, and all the questions would just roll off our backs…
A day or two after Canadian Thanksgiving, Nita called me at work requesting that I bring her Subway for her lunch… that was incredibly odd, because during the entirety of our relationship, she had a notorious dislike of Subway.
Mostly as a joke (but also because I had a hunch), I went to Wal-Mart to pick up pregnancy tests before picking up and dropping off her sandwich. We shared a laugh, and I went back to work.
I sent her a quick note to say, y’know, “you should probably take a test, just in case, because you never know?” She agreed, but was like “haha, when this comes back negative, you’ll eat your words!”
A few minutes later, the Facebook message came in.
“Uhhh…….. holy s**t.”
So, Anita is pregnant, and is due this coming June. To say that we were surprised to learn this would be an understatement, but when she started feeling sick and craving weird things, I knew something was up.
We had the positive tests, we had confirmation from an after-hours clinic doctor that “oh yeah, those tests are accurate, you’re pregnant”, and we had a very sick mommy-to-be. But other than that, it hadn’t really sunk in.
I had a couple days of vacation to use before the end of the year, so I used two of them in November the week Battlefront was released. The 16th, Nita had her first appointment her new family doctor, so I took that day off… the 17th would be dedicated to crushing Rebel scum\Imperial scum.
During the appointment, the doctor said “we’ll try to hear the heartbeat – we might not be able to hear anything yet, but we’ll give it a shot!” Nita and I both thought “well, hopefully there’s an actual baby in there and it wasn’t a false-positive test”, mostly because it was still such an unbelievable turn of events.
The doctor’s office overlooks a 200-plus year old cemetery, and it was a really cloudy day that day. While the doctor asked Nita questions, I stared out the window and tried not to get bummed out. What a dreary and gross day!
*Man, I can’t believe I finally get to play Battlefront tomorrow…*
I just kinda sat there in my own little world, paying attention pretty much only when I needed to pay attention. When it came time to try and hear the heartbeat however, I snapped out of it. After a few moments, we heard it.
*whoww-whoww-whoww-whoww-whoww-whoww*
I couldn’t believe it. That was *our child*. After being told it probably wouldn’t happen for us, there it was, clear as day.
*whoww-whoww-whoww-whoww-whoww-whoww*
I looked at Nita, and she looked at me. Time froze. Was this real??
*whoww-whoww-whoww-whoww-whoww-whoww*
After the tests and her countless bouts of vomiting, we knew she was pregnant, but it hadn’t hit home yet. When we heard that heartbeat, that was the moment it truly dawned on both of us; we are going to be parents.
I got Battlefront the next day, but to tell the truth, I was on such a high from the day before that my first experience with the game was a blur.
Even now, after a couple months of playing the game religiously, I’m still experiencing some pretty amazing stuff.
We’re in the process of moving to a new place, and although we were going through and packing\moving things gradually, I left my Xbox One and Battlefront unpacked so I could keep playing it. Not only am I incredibly pumped for the move into a much better place to raise a child, but we have also gone for an ultrasound to *see* our baby.
As mind-blowing as hearing the heartbeat was, seeing the child and learning the sex was even crazier.
So yeah, these past few months have been a whirlwind, but I’m so incredibly excited for what’s to come in 2016!
A bunch of Battlefront DLC and a bouncing baby boy. Not too shabby.