(I originally posted this article on Bits ‘n’ Bytes Gaming on February 1, 2011)

You can tell a game is going to kick your ass when the MAIN MENU MUSIC is more intense than the final boss music in most other games.

I, being a longtime Treasure fan (having spent a large portion of my youth playing Gunstar Heroes and Dynamite Headdy on my Sega Genesis, which to this day are two of my favorite games) was overjoyed when the Japan-only Nintendo 64 game Sin & Punishment was finally made available to a North American audience via the Wii’s Virtual Console. It was really campy (naturally) and amazingly hard, but I loved it all the same.

Then Nintendo released Sin & Punishment: Star Successor for the Wii, which I consider one of the most dangerous games ever released. This game not only throws an incredible difficulty level at you, but it’s also designed in such a way as to make you feel worse about yourself every time you screw up.

There’s been three big games released recently, and I’m a lazy good-for-nothing so I haven’t written about them yet. Let me rectify that, as a Christmas gift to you, my handful of loyal readers.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with what I do for my day job, I work in the administration department of a natural and organic grocery store chain. My job entails counting cash and working with store financial reports, so as a result I have an office that has no windows and requires a key code to get into. My job is one that must literally be done every day, and as such I have a backup who works on weekends while I’m doing cool things like saving the world and winning NBA championships.

A while back Christina and I were at our local Newbury Comics and they had some of the American Legend of Zelda gashapon figures. They were less than $5 so we bought a few. We got a Darknut, Tetra and two Links. I took the spare Link to work, where I set him up on my computer so he could protect me from Keese and Stalfos.

Last week, I came into work on Monday after a weekend of bench pressing Buicks and tempering swords to find my Link figure broken. The figure ITSELF wasn’t broken, but the peg that connected him to his base had snapped. There was no note and no email. There aren’t a lot of people who have access to my office, so I figured it was either my backup or my store team leader. No big deal. I’d just take him home, glue him back together and set him back up.

I haven’t written much lately. Looking at this front page, I’ve hardly written anything of substance in the past month! Sorry about that. That’s just like me, saying I’m not going to stop writing and then doing exactly that. In my defense Christina and I have been very busy, she’s been sick and those Blogimations that no one watches are a LOT of work.

Rather than spend another day doing nothing and complaining that I don’t know what to write about, here’s a few quick thoughts on what I’ve been up to.

I’m going to be topical today! How quaint.

Dragon Quest X was re-announced last night, much to the joy of every single citizen of Japan ever. I say re-announced because it was originally announced back at the same time as IX, but never mentioned again.

Dragon Quest, Square-Enix’s OTHER beloved long-running RPG series is a national treasure in Japan. The Japanese government had to ask Square-Enix (then just Enix) not to release Dragon Quest games during the week because too many people would stay home from work and school. This isn’t a law, like people believe, but this is the internet so trying to convince people that a rumor is inaccurate is like trying to yell at the ocean to stop being so wet all the time.

If you look at sales data and see that the Wii is continuing to sell, you probably wonder “how can that still be selling even if everyone already has one?” I point you to my mom’s birthday present, a Wii she asked for from my stepdad.

I just got off the phone with her and she is so excited to be playing Wii Sports. SO excited. She can’t wait to go buy Wii Fit and try that out too.

My mom’s pretty rad.

Hey, Nintendo. Please put Pokémon Red and Blue on the 3DS Virtual Console. Then, add Pokémon Stadium to the Wii’s Virtual Console, and let us link them up just like we were using the Transfer Pak back on the Nintendo 64.

I have extremely fond memories of both games and I’m willing to throw money at you to relive them again.

Your pal, Joe

With Nintendo being the big man on campus for so long, it’s really weird to see them in panic mode.

As you are no doubt aware, Nintendo is cutting the price of the 3DS from $249.99 to $169.99 on August 12, not even five months after its North American release (with similar price slashes occurring across all regions). Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has announced that he is taking responsibility for the lukewarm sales of the 3DS by cutting his salary by 50%, with other Nintendo executives taking similar, yet smaller, cuts.

It goes without saying that this isn’t the same Nintendo that we’ve grown accustomed to the past few years, who would dedicate a good chunk of their E3 presentations to showing off their astronomical sales numbers while so-called “hardcore” gamers pouted in the corner. They had confidence, they had swagger. Now they’re flailing, and it’s really, really weird to see.

So Club Nintendo is a pretty rad setup. You register your Nintendo games and systems (which extends your system’s warranty as well), tell Nintendo a little bit about where you bought the item and what you think of it, and you earn “coins” to redeem for free prizes. Each year if you earn a certain number of coins you achieve either “Gold” or “Platinum” status which entitles you to a special bonus gift that you can’t get otherwise.

Since Christina and I put several Nintendo employee’s children through college with the amount of money we give the company, we’ve hit Platinum status each year since the program started (in fact, once we hit Platinum for the year, we stop registering games and save them for the next year, so we typically hit Platinum again for the following year on the first day). The gifts have been pretty awesome so far. The first year we got Mario’s hat. Last year we got this impressive statue of the Mario cast that came in a super cool ? block:

(Note: I originally published this article on Bits ‘n’ Bytes Gaming on February 29, 2011)

Hey everyone, Joe here, and I’ve got some totally rad stuff for you: information on Nintendo’s upcoming console, the Ultra 64!

The Ultra 64 is Nintendo’s follow-up to the hugely successful Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and from the early information I’ve come across, it’s going to be a real game-changer! If you need any more convincing, just think about this: Super Mario and Zelda in 3D. Oh yeah. The future is here, baby!