Welcome back to another retro gaming post. My first retro gaming post was about Carmen Sandiego being the most stylish criminal. Today’s post is going back to popular arcade games. My absolute favorite arcade game ever has to be Dig Dug. My younger self had a Dig Dug emulator on my old computer and I spent too much of my time playing this game. Dig Dug is one of my favorite arcade games.

Briefly, Dig Dug had a featured cameo in Wreck-It Ralph. I wish Dig Dug had a bigger role in this movie, but sadly they are only seen in passing. Dig Dug was a creation in the 80’s thanks to the Japanese company, Namco. Atari snatched the license for Dig Dug and made it playable on most of their machines. Dig Dug is named after the monster killer as he goes underground to eliminate the “Pooka” and the “Fygar” The Pooka is that little blob with the yellow goggles while the Fygar is the green dragon that’s oddly adorable in this screenshot above.

Each game places the Dig Dug in the center of the map. At first, the Pookas and the Fygars are contained in their areas. Throughout the rounds, they can fly up to meet the Dig Dug to try and kill him. The rocks are especially useful because if the Dig Dug passes underneath the rocks, they become loose and can drop on the unsuspected Fygar.

Let me know in the comments what your favorite arcade game is.

As a Christmas present, I received a 3DS from my mom. I don’t remember why I wanted one in the first place, but it was all I could talk about. I also received two games; Luigi’s Dark Moon and Animal Crossing New Leaf. I spent hours playing Animal Crossing and didn’t devote my time to anything else. Eventually, I got sick of the game and set my 3DS aside for some time. Lately, I have made it a goal of mine to use my 3DS more. Yoshi’s Island is a game I have been slowly playing through until completing the game yesterday. Here are my initial thoughts.

Yoshi’s Island takes place immediately after Super Mario World where a stork is delivering baby Mario and Luigi to new parents. Kamek thwarts this plan by kidnapping the stork and baby Luigi. Yoshi now with little baby Mario attempt to rescue Luigi and the kidnapped stork. Personally, I could care less about the actual story. I care about the levels and the ease of playing the game.

I will say some of the levels were incredibly fun. In the Brave the Bumpty Blizzard level, Yoshi slides around and encounters penguins to interact with. The tropical world 3 levels are another one of my favorites from the game.

Yoshi’s Island doesn’t offer a lot of rewards for replaying the game. I mean now that I have completed it, I probably won’t play it again for some time. I could collect all the coins, but there’s no incentive for me to do that. Unless I could unlock additional content? It’s not worth it.

If you’re 3DS is collecting dust on a shelf, I do recommend picking this game up. It’s adorable, cute and a relaxing game to ease into picking up the 3DS again. Now I’m incredibly excited because the next game on my shelf to play is Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time and it’s my first time playing. I can’t wait.

Thursday nights are typically boring because I usually write my lab report and work at night. However, this past Thursday was actually eventful. Thursday happened to be a game night that my library at school was hosting. Local board game shops are invited to our library to demo board games for students. After I ended work, I drove to the library and played games with a couple of cool people. One of the games I tried out was Dixit. Dixit is essentially Apples to Apples with abstract pictures and it’s oddly enjoyable.

In this game, players draw 6 cards that have abstract art on them. On your turn, you pick a card from your hand and say one word about that card. You want this word to describe the image, but not so obvious that everyone knows what image you pick. Everyone else picks a card and adds it to the pile. The cards are then placed face up and everyone else guesses which card you picked. There are points awarded to the players who correctly guess the card I put in. You win by being the first player to receive 30 points.

For example, say I decided I wanted to use the card on the right with the man destroying the city. Some good descriptive words could be: hungry, angry, and epic. These words are broad yet could describe what’s occurring in the art. Some words I wouldn’t use to describe the image on the right could be destruction, devastation and monster. These words would be too specific to that picture.

Initially, I thought I wouldn’t be very good at this game. As my friends were explaining it to me, I was still puzzled by how the game worked. During the rounds, I started to catch on and even though I didn’t win the game, I came really close.

I definitely would play this again. I didn’t think I would love this game as much as I did, but it makes you think. It’s a fun twist on Apples to Apples that the whole family can enjoy. I’m glad I could cross off another game on my Board Game Bucket List.

Scrolling through the gaming section on my blog, I was shocked to see that I hadn’t written a gaming-themed article since August! Due to a lack of time from working on weekends, to studying Mechanical Kinesiology notes, I haven’t been gaming nearly as much as I used to. I attempt to set aside two hours to just game and not do anything productive. Nonetheless, I game when I can and a couple weekends ago I finally beat Batman Arkham Knight. Here are my initial thoughts about the story.

The Return of Oracle

Barbara Gordon lives!! YAY 🙂 A couple weeks ago, I posted about Barbara and how her death angered me. Turns out that she didn’t die in the first place, so I had to edit my Barbara blog post.. how embarrassing. Anyway, I was glad she had a major role in the finale at the GCPD. That was probably one of my favorite parts of the game, to be honest. If there is another Batman game, I really want Barbara to have a bigger role.

The Robin Family

Nightwing is probably one of my favorite comic book heroes of all time. Does anyone else have a crush on Dick Grayson? No? Just me?

The Batmobile 

The battle mode in the Batmobile feels like Grand Theft Auto in Gotham and I love it. There is a side quest where you have to take out a bunch of tanks while also safely disarming bombs and it’s so much fun. I’m actually a horrible driver when I play video games so I constantly kept crashing into things.

While I finished the game, I’m that gamer who wants to complete everything in a game! After I fly around Gotham and finish most of the side quests, I will feel like I finally restored Gotham to a place of solace.

I’m sure everyone can agree with me when they say they hate moving. I think the worst is just realizing how much stuff you truly own. I spent most of last week moving the boyfriend’s things. When we finally arranged everything I was finally able to unwind and play on his Xbox One. The first game I popped into his Xbox was Titanfall and I had a blast.

Titanfall is basically an online based game where you fight other players in this futuristic world. I don’t know if there’s any campaign for this game.? I’m pretty sure the only point is to play online and rack up levels which is totally fine with me. Once you score enough points in the game you can summon a “titan” which is this huge robot you can pilot. Battling gamers in Titanfall reminded me of Halo 3 and all of the endless hours I spent playing online.

Another reason I was so excited for this game was it easily reminded me of Pacific Rim. Pacific Rim is an underrated Guillermo Del Toro movie that I really love. The titans remind me of the Jaegers which are mechanical ships that are piloted by humans. Also if you haven’t watched Pacific Rim I highly recommend it. The Titan has a lot of cool mechanics including shooting rockets and blocking attacks. I can also use the scope to zoom in on other players and run over and smash pilots on the ground.

Titanfall is such a fun time and I can’t wait to play it throughout the year when I’m back in Winona.

Last week, I visited River Quest randomly after I got off work. I was feeling frustrated with college and life in general, so it was nice to procrastinate for an hour or so. River Quest’s board game of the week was called Here Kitty Kitty which is about collecting cats. Of course, I wanted to play this game so we broke it out and played one round.

This is the scorecard of the game. The goal is to move the kitties to your house because you get more points that way. However, there are cards in this game that can cause some ruckus which include stealing cats, passing cats to your neighbor’s house, and preventing people from stealing your cats. After all the cards have been used, the game ends and the score is totaled. The one with the highest score wins.

The cats remain in the center and you can take a cat and add it to your board. Each turn consists of two actions. This includes taking a cat and placing it in your yard, moving a cat from the yard to the porch, or moving it into the house. Also playing a card counts as one action so it’s important to plan each turn effectively!

This is the rule card below. You can also plan out which color of cats are on your property. So getting all grey cats or all black cats will earn you more points.

Being the cat lover I am, I liked this game. I liked that it was simple to learn, but also was over quick. Sometimes longer board games make me lose my attention span, but this one was perfect. If you are a cat lady like myself, this game must be in your closet.