The Haul of It All

Every once in a while, you find some really good stuff in the free bin at the local thrift store. Stuff like this!

Sadly, I couldn't find the disc for Super Paper Mario, but everything else was in the case... sometimes in the wrong case, but hey, it was free. I was most excited about Super Mario Maker for the Wii U, because I was always curious about that game, but never curious enough to pay sixty dollars for it.

Everyone's going nuts about the recent announcement of a sequel, which will offer new skins and features along with a multiplayer mode. I'm just happy to get in on the ground floor with the original, and while I haven't spent much time making stages, I've sure spent time playing them. The game starts you out with an eight stage "10 Mario Challenge," which offers familiar levels with unexpected and increasingly peculiar twists. It was quite a mind screw to dive into the open pipe in World 1-1 of Super Mario Bros., only to discover that the underground cache of coins had become a discotheque, complete with pulsing music, dancing lights, and a shower of currency from two spinning cannons. "What is this I don't even" describes the experience pretty well.

I'm enjoying this game, but I really didn't need to be
reminded of Miiverse's demise. Believe me, Nintendo,
I haven't forgotten... it's why I haven't bought a Switch.

The other games are just gravy (diaper gravy in the case of Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric, if the reviews are to be believed). I already owned Super Smash Bros. Brawl, but it's nice to have a case to go along with it. Super Mario Sluggers I've never played before, but the Mario cast in a baseball game seems like a solid concept. Wii Play didn't get great reviews, but it may provide me with some fleeting entertainment. Then there are the two GameCube games, Mario Party 4 and Wario Ware. I can't imagine getting too much use out of the former, but I had the latter game in Michigan and it's comforting to have it close at hand again.

Oh! Before I go, I should probably mention that Sega has announced the next ten games that will be included with the Sega Genesis Mini. You'll find the details on Polygon, but the Cliff Notes is that there will be a lot of Capcom games in the final product, including Ghouls 'n Ghosts, Street Fighter 2: Special Championship Edition, and Mega Man: The Wily Wars. (Are you ready for a Genesis collection of the first three Mega Man games which somehow aren't as good as the NES originals? Too bad, you're getting it anyway.) Some other goodies include Phantasy Star IV, Wonder Boy in Monster World, and Beyond Oasis. Some baddies include Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle and Sonic Spinball, just in case you needed a little kusoge in your retro gaming diet.

Two other things! I've finished seven chapters of the Neo-Geo ports book, and just installed a 128GB SD card in my Playstation Vita. Sony's proprietary cards always left the system at a loss for storage, but with this monster in place, my Vita will never go hungry again!