Barbie (NES)

What a surreal experience this game is. I've been playing it since I was a little kid; it was one of my first NES games.

See, Barbie is going to sleep. She has unusual dreams about the mall. Because she's Barbie and this was made in the late '80s / early '90s so she didn't exactly have a doctorate or anything yet.

So she goes to the sporting goods store in this dream, where she pulls charms off of her bracelet (bottom left of the screen) and pelts a dog with them until it removes the bouncing tennis ball from her path. No really, that's what's happening here:

Later, she goes clothes shopping. Duh, she's Barbie; she's not going to go to the mall (even in her dreams) without clothes shopping.

There seems to be an issue with haunted clothes, though, starting with these floating blouses (though when I was six, I would have sworn up and down to you that these things were plastic bags wafting in the wind, because it made an equal amount of sense):

The "boss" for the clothing store is a bouncing outfit. The shoes come at you (with a vengeance... perhaps Barbie is having a nightmare about buyer's remorse?) but the rest of the clothes just bounce up and down in place as one until you toss some bracelet charms at them and one by one, the articles of clothing disappear.

This is the piece de resistance in this game: the Galleria. Anyone who has ever gone to a shopping mall in America has seen a mall fountain. But the fountains in this mall (yes, I know, it's a dream, but come on now) have FISH in them. Not like, "oh look at the pretty koi in the fake pond." Silver, jumping, FISH. Like, trout or something. I don't know; I don't fish. But these guys don't belong here. Also, Barbie got all dressed up in some '80s prom monstrosity to get doused with fountain water and fish-slapped (instead of her timeless pink crop top and black leggings, above).

Whatever, you walk your way through a mess of fountains, fishless and... fishful... and Barbie wakes up and comments on what a wonderful dream she had (weirdo).

Brain Age 2 (week 2)

And here are the rest of the trainings from Brain Age 2 on Nintendo DS. I really needed this mental break these past two weeks, so even though it probably wasn't very interesting to see on Instagram, I'm glad I did this.

Word Blend (Monday 11/13)
My least favorite of all of them

Calendar Count (Tuesday 11/14)

Math Recall (Wednesday 11/15)

Clock Spin (Thursday 11/16)

Block Count (Friday 11/17)

Brain Age 2 (week one)

So to alleviate some of the time and energy cost I've been putting into this lately, as I need a little bit of a break, I'm going to do two themed weeks. There are ten trainings in Brain Age 2 for DS, so I'm going to do one each weekday for the next two weeks (with something different over the weekend in between to mix things up). The whole first week is going into this post, then I'll do one post for the whole second week.

Sign Finder (Monday 11/6)

Piano Player (Tuesday 11/7)

Word Scramble (Wednesday 11/8)

Memory Sprint (Thursday 11/9)

Change Maker (Friday 11/10)

Virus Buster

This is a game hidden inside of Brain Age 2 for the Nintendo DS that would be a total knockoff of Dr. Mario if it wasn't made by the same company.

You can only play Virus Buster once you've done your Daily Training for the day (but you only have to do one exercise to unlock it for the day). You're told before it starts that it isn't training, but it's for relaxation.

The music is the same as one of the modes in Dr. Mario for NES, but like a soothing, lullaby-style remix of it. It's nice. And a little weird.

You can only rotate the pills in one direction, by tapping on them, but - at least in Easy mode - they fall really slowly so it's not really an issue.

Also, if you have "remainder" pill pieces after you get four in a row that disappear, they also fall slowly and you can actually grab those and move them around if you want to, which I think is pretty cool.

I am pleased to announce that I'm just as good at this game as I am at regular Dr. Mario.

Scribblenauts (DS)

I always thought this was a clever idea for a game, but I never play it for long. I don't know why... it just doesn't grab me.

For the unfamiliar: you work your way through stages, solving problems by writing the names of objects that will help in the scene. For example, in the top right photo, I was told to help the birthday boy break the pinata, so I wrote "bat" and handed him the baseball bat and he swung at the pinata... problem solved! Some aren't so easy.

Side note: I was amazed to turn on the DS and see that its battery was fully charged... I haven't used it in ages. Props to Nintendo for that one!

Tetris 2 (NES)

My favorite game ever, of any kind, is Dr. Mario. I think the vast amount of time I have dedicated to that game has made me mildly worse at this one.

Instead of how normal Tetris works, where you want to build solid horizontal lines of blocks at the bottom to make them disappear, in this one, you get blocks (yellow, blue, and red) with black circles in the middle to begin with (randomly arranged) and you get Tetris blocks made of different colored blocks (also yellow, blue, and red) to drop on them. You want to match three blocks in the same color in a row to make them disappear. The goal is to make all the original blocks with the black circles in them disappear to move on to the next level.

Dr. Mario has made me worse at this one because of the very slight differences. Both games use the same mechanic, goal, and three colors (and both have good music!), but Dr. Mario has pills of two "blocks" each while Tetris 2 has shapes of four blocks each, and Dr. Mario calls for four in a row to make them disappear and Tetris 2 calls for three in a row.

Super Spike V'Ball (NES)

This cartridge has two games on it: Super Spike Volleyball (tonight's game) and Nintendo World Cup soccer. I am terrible at both.

You get to pick your player, but they all look the same. Except their Speedo colors, of course.

Perhaps the most annoying thing about this game (other than the weirdly loud sand sound you make when you dive for the ball and miss) is that sometimes it switches you to controlling the other player on your team. By this, I mean, in the photo above, I'm serving, but once the other team returned the ball, my little [1] was over top of the other player, because he was closer to the ball. I can only assume it's a lack of good AI from 1988, because he was only good for setting the ball up for me, he never actually returned it over the net.

It also took me way longer than I'm comfortable admitting to figure out how to spike the stupid ball. The A button is a regular set, and the B button gets you up in the air, but the timing of hitting B to jump up and A to actually HIT the ball to spike it, was... well, there was a learning curve.

Womp womp. Look at my team hanging their heads in shame at the score of 2-15. Ouch.

Wheel of Fortune (NES)

WHEEL! OF! FORTUNE! [8-bit version of theme music]

I've loved Wheel and Jeopardy since I was a little kid and didn't understand half the puzzles/questions. So naturally, I had (and still have) the NES versions of both games. I also have them both for Nintendo DS, but those are for another day. I also had the board game of Wheel a long time ago. It was actually really cleverly designed... I think I'll try to track one down so I can own it again. (In retrospect, actually, I should have saved all the versions of Wheel of Fortune to do a themed week, but I guess it's too late for that!)

I played against the computer... spoiler alert, "Leslie" won. (I played on Medium because I always played Easy as a kid and figured I could probably do better now?)

I have such a thing about 8-bit sound effects, as I'm remembering while I play all these old NES games. The best sounds from this game are the wheel's fast spin (sometimes it goes fast, sometimes it goes slow, I dunno) and the little alert sound for when there are only vowels left on the board, and the little "byoo" sound it makes when you choose a letter. Also, they actually recorded Vanna congratulating you at the end, because that's definitely her voice. (Check out the awful frilly pink ridiculousness she's wearing in the final round photo up there.)

Magic Darts (NES)

This game and I have had quite a back-and-forth. When I was little, I didn't like it because it was kind of boring. I would play it with my parents every once in a while, though, and I soon discovered that if I played as the alien (as I always did after this point), (1) it throws the dart by wiggling its finger instead of an actual throwing motion, and (2) sometimes the dart randomly flies around all over the place instead of going where you threw it, and that can be annoying or fun, depending on how important that throw was. Then I grew bored with it again, and now, as an adult, it's actually pretty fun.

It really helps to actually know darts terminology (of which I never realized there was so much, until I revisited this game). There are a handful of types of games, but the only ones I ever play are the 301, 501, and 701 (where you try to get exactly that number of points without going over).

You line up your shot with three different aspects. In the photo above: (1) the dart at the bottom of the dartboard has a ticker underneath it that goes left/right; (2) then an aiming cone thing is in front of your face and goes up/down; (3) then the red bar at the far right is up/down too.

It didn't happen in this game, but sometimes a fly appears on the board and if you hit it... I don't remember what happens. Something.

MarioKart 64

First things first... happy video games day! I noticed earlier this week that I've done nothing but video games (including phone/Flash/browser games) this month and maybe I should branch out a little... but not today!

If that sight doesn't just warm my heart. I love this game. I love the tracks, I love the items, I love the sound effects, I love drifting in the corners... I just love it.

It was getting late by the time I finally got around to picking a game for the day, so I just did one grand prix (Mushroom Cup, to test my muscle memory and see how I did... first place, natch) and then a time trial on Rainbow Road...

...in which I might have had my worst lap time ever. Well, maybe not counting the first couple of times we ever played the game, but that was ages ago.

Pokemon Snap (N64)

I have to tell you... it's really hard to take a picture of myself playing this game. Which is funny, since it's a game about taking pictures.

If you can't tell, those are Sandslash, Staryu, and a video of Dratini showing off.

I freely admit that I played from the old saved game (which, I had both of our copies and didn't know which was which, but based on the name, this one was Birk's) so I didn't have to unlock everything myself. (I'm not a huge fan of the River stage, personally).

Super Mario Sunshine

In celebration of the solar eclipse today, I selected Super Mario Sunshine for today's game!

What an annoying game. I knew this already. Unskippable cut scenes... seriously, does ANYONE like those? There are a LOT in the beginning of this game.

Also, FLUDD creeps me out. Always has, always will. In the image above, he scans Mario and knows his name and that he's from the Mushroom Kingdom. Why, exactly, does a backpack that squirts water need to be able to do this? I get that it's also an exposition machine, but why did this need to happen?

The primary issue at the beginning of the game is that evil Mario painted pollution all over this island, especially on the gate thing that attracts all the sun sprites, which power the island. To paraphrase FLUDD's awkward exposition, even during the day it's dark out because this stuff is in the way of the shiny thing. Kind of like... AN ECLIPSE. Neat. It fit even better than I realized it would.