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).

Something Something Soup Something

I actually held onto this one for a while, waiting for the right day to use it. I finally opened it up (you can play online here) and played. It's... odd.

It's a philosophical "game" where you categorize the things presented to you as either "soup" or "not soup." It varies the definitions of the liquid (some have ice, some are non-specific like "foamy liquid" and some are downright irresponsible like battery acid), the stuff in the liquid (meat, random household objects), the bowl (a coconut, a football helmet, a bowl), and the implement served alongside it (straw, fork, spoon, I'm pretty sure I remember seeing something like an axe?).

It's actually really interesting to see the results (your own and, on the website, those of others) to see how you define "soup." (Take note: it never says it actually has to be edible, it just says it has to be "soup" that can be served to the humans upstairs.)

New York Times Crossword

This was a doozy. We went over to my in-laws' for dinner and my sister-in-law was working on the NYT crossword when we got there.

I am proud to say that we finished it (and less proud to say that we did actually look up like two or three of them because we didn't get the shtick for the italicized clues).

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp

Once it finally downloaded completely, I played this for a bit. It's cute and looks like it will be fun, but I didn't get really far into it. It's really linear but pretends not to be (like dialogue options that aren't really options, like "looks good!" and "that sounds fine" as your two options). But hey, that eagle guy on the right was pretty excited that I walked across the sidewalk and brought him an apple, so that's cool.

The Game

I'm going to have to blame turkey coma or something on this one, but I actually forgot to play a game this day. Which, technically, means that I won The Game!

For the uninitiated, The Game is a game you can only win by not thinking about it. So you've just lost by reading this. But I lost by writing it, so there's that.

Battleship

Happy Thanksgiving! While we waited for dinner to finish being prepared, Sarah (my sister-in-law and fellow games lover) and I played Battleship, old-school.

Super Stickman Golf 2

I actually borrowed Birk's phone for this one. We had gotten into bed, I remembered I needed to play a game, and thought, "Oh, I have a few friends who are enjoying Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp; I should download that and play it for a while." Well, it downloaded quickly but then there was immediately a data update I had to download, and my connection wasn't doing so hot, and I got frustrated with it. Birk offered me his phone, and I found Super Stickman Golf 2. I actually did pretty well, see?

Flow Free

I think I used to have this on my phone... if not, I at least remember seeing ads for it on Facebook or something. It's a pretty simple premise: connect the two same-colored dots with a line that doesn't overlap with any of the other lines.

Hallmark Fantasy Game

If you didn't already know about this, I'm going to change your life.

The Hallmark Channel has a fantasy game (like fantasy football) for their Christmas movies. Every week, you choose the ones you think will do the best that week (I guess in viewership?) and there are also trivia questions associated with it to give you bonus points.

Edit: I'm actually catching up on posts a week later right now, so as of 11/26, I'm beating Garrison but not by much. We'll see if I keep the lead!

Snake Vs Block

I saw an ad for this on Instagram and it looked like fun.

It's kind of like Centipede (you direct where the line of little yellow dots in the middle goes side-to-side while the screen automatically scrolls) but you want to build up dots (by picking up the individual little yellow dots with the numbers over them) so that when you inevitably hit a numbered block, you lose that number of dots but as long as you still have at least one dot in your line, you can keep going.

It sounds really simple but it scrolls really fast so it takes some practice.