Category: games

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games life

Personal Games: Disgaea 2 (PSP)

I went on my honeymoon this year, after over three years of being married and saving, to Tokyo. I’d been before in 2008 for a meager three days, making the most of a situation I had dreamed about for so much of my life, and something I’d never thought I would be able to do. But there I was walking the streets of Akihabara to buy games I couldn’t read the language of, fascinated by the culture shock and plethora of lights and sounds from every street. It was heavenly.

While I was there this time with my wonderful wife I bought more games (no surprise there), and to my surprise, I stumbled into a couple at a second-hand store. As a terrible victim of nostalgia, I had to take them back to the US with me as a long-loved symbol of a trouble era of my life. I’d put in the work and rebuilt my life and mental health off the back of one.

That game was Disgaea 2: Dark Hero Days.

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games Lost Token Games tech

Welcome to the Jam

As a child, I wanted to create video games so bad. I didn’t know how to program (nor anyone willing to sit down and teach me), but I did have a spiral notebook I packed with ideas: some of them just a title and a genre, others with a character in mind. A few I had built a world in my head, and was ready to get started.

But I didn’t. Never did. I may have turned a few into stories at some point, but otherwise, those ideas are lost to time. A book of childhood fantasies that never came true.

I have better tools now. And over the past week, I’ve exercised them. And with that, there’s now a game named Caretaker.

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games tech

“(Y)ou must first invent the universe.”

I’ve been playing a game called Moonlighter, an independent game from the small team of about seven people in Spain called Digital Sun Games. Players take control of Will, a shop owner that sells by day, and plunders randomly-generated dungeons by night to find new materials with which to craft and sell to his patrons. It has a thoughtfully-crafted in-game economy (as you might expect from a game based on selling items to customers), Legend of Zelda-inspired dungeon crawling, and an expandable shop to spend those earnings on. There’s even a banker that can help grow your money (whenever you’re able to talk to him).

And it’s a perfect example of why I love living in the future: every possibility to make something wonderful… no matter how small your team or experience.

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games life tech

Game Boy: A Retrospective

One of the best-selling consoles of all time, the Nintendo Game Boy is a unique beast in the gaming landscape. It wasn’t nearly as powerful as its competitors, the screen was about as awful as a screen could be (even in its heyday), and the games… there was a lot of garbage developed for it. Yet with nearly 119 million units sold in the Game Boy line, from the original gray brick in 1989 until the final Game Boy Color rolled off the assembly line in 2003, the 8-bit juggernaut was a console that couldn’t be ignored, even when it was being absolutely overlooked.

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games

Greetings from Quarantine: Game Time

I’ve purchased, reviewed, inherited and been gifted so many games over the years, I have some to spare that haven’t been given the time of day. Tiny curios from my trip to Akihabara over ten years ago, Xmas gifts from well-meaning relatives, the odd RPG that sounded neat but “it was never the right time”… if I’m not able to leave the house for more than a grocery trip or an ER visit (which hopefully doesn’t have to happen), now would be the time.

It’s time to play the game.

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