PixlBit

Last night my wife and I sat down to get back into Gears of War 3, only to discover that our Xbox LIVE Gold momberships had expired. We knew that was coming but it was still a surprise. But no worries, we thought. It's not like we were playing online. But we have been saving our progress to online storage for most games because we have a dinky harddrive. Well guess what...only Gold members get to use online storage, so we can't finish our game till we renew, and the budget won't allow that for at least another month. Poop.

And perhaps blue skies for the series ahead?

I mentioned that March had been an exhausting month and while April was better on that front, it was also a busier one. And, well, I found myself spread thin with a few too many games going at once.

Eating everything

Cowabunga!

This news is a little old but it's too good to pass up, so please bear with me if you already heard about it. Square Enix has been surprised by the success of Bravely Default both in Japan and abroad and apparently is rethinking its mass appeal development strategy, which means we might be getting more JRPGs from them that are focused on being great JRPGs. What a novel concept! Check out this USgamer article for more details about an interview with Square Enix's president. This sounds good and I hope they carry through with it.

When Nintendo released Mario Party in 1998, it further solidified the N64 as the system you played with your friends. That first entry established the formula the series would follow for years to come: Moving around a nonlinear board to collect coins and buy stars while going head-to-head with the other players in minigames. Mario Party was a hit, of course, and was followed in 1999 and 2000 with Mario Party 2 and Mario Party 3, respectively, both for the N64. After a year off in 2001, the party moved to the GameCube with Mario Party 4 in 2002 and didn’t stop until the release of MP7 in 2005.

March was an exhausting month. Not that it was so full of stuff but everything was just...exhausting. I was mostly absent around here, I know, but I've got some things planned for April and even have a blog already written! But we're talking about March right now. I did get one game finished and made progress on several more. Take a look!

One of Mario's strangest adventures is Super Mario Land for the Game Boy. It takes him far afield from the Mushroom Kingdom into Sarasaland as he tries to stop an alien, of all things, who kidnapped Princess Daisy. I suppose Luigi ought to have been the one to save her but he must have been busy. Maybe they hadn't met yet? Oh well. Mario's first stop is the Birabuto Kingdom and it has a very upbeat, gamey sound to it.

When Ben asked the community here if anyone wanted to write some music for his RPG, Gutterdelve, I was tied up finishing the last song for Pirate Code. But I sent him a message once I was done with that, asking if he still needed music. He said it'd be great to have some boss music. It took me a couple weeks to work on it (life was busy), but then he didn't answer his messages because he was so consumed with finishing the game...and never got the song.