What Did You Play? No Clever Title Edition (January 2015)

by John "ANC" Barnes on

Damn, and I was trying to be more timely with these. Ah well.

Super Mario 3D Land (3DS) – Five glittery stars and S8-Crown unlocked. Have any of you beaten that stage? I sure haven’t yet. My goodness.

Pinball Arcade (PS3) – I caved and bought Season 2 despite not quite reaching my self-appointed goal of finishing all of the wizard goals on the tables I own already. Oh man, it’s so cool to play Haunted House and Cue Ball Wizard again, even if they aren’t on the level of the Bally/Williams tables. I played the hell out of the versions on Microsoft’s Pinball Arcade back in the early ’00s.

3D After Burner II (3DS) – I don’t know if I’ll ever get good at this but damn if it isn’t a blast. So happy to see Sega bringing the second series out in the US. I think Galaxy Force II is the better bet if you have to pick, but if you love going fast and occasionally shooting shit then pick this one up. It’s also your best bet since After Burner Climax just went AWOL on PSN and XBLA. ROTFLMFAO

Gunman Clive (3DS) – Two bucks and Saturday afternoon boredom/sickness led me to pick this one up, along with the sequel just coming out. A stylish little game priced just right.

Spelunky (PS3) – YYyyep.

Clubhouse Games (DS)

Academy Chess Puzzles (DSiWare) – Two cheap purchases motivated by my getting back into chess [and back into table games in general] beyond “hey I know how the pieces move.” Academy Chess Puzzles actually makes for a fun, cheap puzzle game even if you don’t play chess all that much, and *might* help you improve in certain aspects as well. Clubhouse Games may not be perfect and may be superseded by other collections at this point, but it was cheap and it has shogi on it so hey. I went through the stamp mode and actually played bridge and backgammon for the first time ever, among other games, so that was cool. Totally bogus that there’s no two-player option available through download play, though. Ah well, picking up another cart will still make it the cheapest portable shogi set I can find.

Happy post-holiday game drought thingy. Not that there’s ever any shortage of things to play these days.