Animal Crossing: New Leaf

Many of you already know that I’m not a big fan of portable games. I prefer playing games on TV, not on handheld systems. True, I do have a Game Boy Advance that I can take on trips, but I also have a Game Boy Player for GameCube that lets me play those games on a TV as well. I never bought a DS, and wasn’t all that interested in 3DS either.

But then Animal Crossing: New Leaf came along. As most of you know, I am a big Animal Crossing fan/addict, and my Animal Crossing: City Folk blog is by far the most popular part of JVGS. But after seeing a lof of New Leaf in pictures and videos, I was pleasantly surprised. It seems that they finally are making a real sequel to Animal Crossing and not just a rehash. They’re really putting in the effort in to make lots of new features and make the game seem fresh again. Because of that, I’ve decided that I will buy Animal Crossing: New Leaf and a 3DS to play it on.

The game, like ACCF before it, lets you take in-game screenshots and save them to an SD card. However, a 3DS won’t work with capture cards. So I will not be able to make all sorts of Youtube videos for the game like I did for the GameCube and Wii games. But I will put up slideshows of the pictures I take, and most importantly, I will be starting an Animal Crossing: New Leaf blog on JVGS. I’ll be posting near-daily updates of the game, pointing out new features and everything that goes on in my town.

The game still doesn’t have a release date in America yet, but it should be released by June. In the meantime, I’ll continue updating my ACCF blog 4-5 times a week and my Animal Crossing GameCube blog about once a week. Stay tuned…this is going to be fun!

Pre-order AC: New Leaf at Amazon.com |  Buy a 3DS at Amazon.com

In other news, I’m still playing through Earthbound on SNES. I just left the town of Twoson and used the Apple Kid’s invention to erase the iron pencil statue blocking my path. Please ignore the mushroom on my head; it’s a medical condition.

Earthbound - pencilI ended up saving my game when I got to Happy Happy Village. It’s home to a weird cult that wants to paint everything blue.

Earthbound - Happy Happy Village

Revisiting Earthbound

Today I decided to revisit Earthbound on Super Nintendo (SNES). I hadn’t played it in several years. I’m not sure if I’m going to play through the entire game again or not, but I do want to at least get to a certain level that was quite memorable for me. Anyway, I started out using the default names for all the characters and everything.

Earthbound - Starting out with default namesThe beginning has a creepy, mysterious atmosphere as you try to figure out what’s going on. Eventually I got to see where a meteorite landed.

Earthbound - Meteorite / MeteorAnd wow, my neighbor is really rude.

Earthbound screenshot I’m not going to go into a lot of detail, but I beat this guy and his robot and then got a key from the mayor before I ended my game for today.

Earthbound - Frank said something nasty.

Frogger 2: That Was Easy

Today I beat Frogger 2: Swampy’s Revenge for Dreamcast. The last three levels take you through a haunted graveyard…

Frogger 2 - Graveyard screenshot…a haunted house…

Frogger 2 - haunted house…and a tower filled with traps and hazards.

Frogger 2 - Tower screenshotThe game was short and easy. A couple parts may seem tricky at first glance, but it’s all just a matter of recognizing patterns and planning your steps hops carefully. Each level has safe spots where you can sit still and observe the patterns for each upcoming obstacle. There are no time limits, and each of the 17 levels takes no more than 5-8 minutes to complete. But the game is definitely fun while it lasts. There are also some extra mini-game levels in the Frogger’s Arcade mode, so I still plan on giving them a try soon. You can expect the review within a couple days.