My new European Luigi 3DS XL arrived!

Look what arrived in the post today!

It's the special edition Year of Luigi 3DS XL, European version!

I bought it from the UK Nintendo Store. It says the release date is 1st Nov 2013, which means they've broken their own street date by a whole week!

I like Luigi. He's funny and reminds me of my fondness of my own little brother. ^_^

Some Doujin Indie Game Bundles

The Groupees Doujin Bundle 2: http://groupees.com/doujin2

This bundle includes a bunch of shoot-em-ups, and the VNs "Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni" (it's the Manga Gamer version DRM-free), and "Hatoful Boyfriend" - the pigeon dating sim.

Fan patching means that there is a more complete version of Higurashi out there, with the images and voice work from the PS2 version if you like. Also, this is just Higurashi, so - just the start of the story. But the price is very good.

Hatoful Boyfriend... try it, it may surprise you.

If you really like doujin shmups and want even more than offered in the Groupees bundle, take a look at the Indie Gala October bundle: http://www.indiegala.com/october

It contains some of the Nyu Media lineup, and if you have one spare US dollar, they're worth a look.

So many European special editions!

It's like... special edition season!

Nintendo are releasing two special 3DS XL consoles:

A Year Of Luigi 3DS XL and a Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds 3DS XL.

I've had my eye on the Luigi one since it came out in Japan, and I've been enjoying my DSi XL far too much recently to be satisfied with my regular sized 3DS, so I pre-ordered it as soon as I saw it the other day. Even though it's due out on November 1st, I got an email earlier saying "Okey-dokey! Your order is on it's way!", so it looks like Nintendo are breaking their own street date!

There's a special edition of the upcoming Legend of Zelda game "A Link Between Worlds", which is the sequel to Link To The Past. It comes with a download code for "Link's Awakening DX" (for some reason...) and as demonstrated by Aonuma and Iwata comes with a little chest that goes "da da da daaa~" when you open it. It was priced at £59.99 the other day, the preorder button has been taken down now. Visiting the page earlier today caused the entire website to break, I wrote to them and they told me that preorders are breaking stuff and that's why the "buy" button is missing at the moment. I'm not sure it's worth it anyway. Not to say it's a bad game; I played a bit of it at the Play Expo and it seems like it will be a fun game, I mean that it's way more expensive than the £32.99 people are pricing the regular edition at.

This Tales Of Symphonia Chronicles Collector's Edition looks amazing, it's a remake that's dual language, and has content from both the PS2 and Gamecube versions of the original game. This collector's edition comes with a novel, soundtrack, and 5 cute figures. It comes out at the end of February, so I've suggested to my boyfriend that it would make an excellent birthday present for someone like me. :)

This Bravely Default Deluxe Collector's Edition comes with a figurine, soundtrack CD, artbook and AR cards. It says it's exclusive to shopto.net, which I did not expect.

The Nintendo shop was the only one to have preorders open at this stage! It's like no-one wants to take my money! XD

Oh well, I shouldn't spend much money on myself this time of year, it's coming up to Christmas present shopping time, and I did just spend most of my money on a pinball table. Also, Guided Fate Paradox and the new Ace Attorney games are out this week, I've been looking forward to both of those. :D

My Scared Stiff Pinball table

I really love pinball.

I love old pinball tables through the ages that were more like bagatelle with flippers for a bit of a 2nd chance. I love new pinball with ramps, video screens, speech, missions, maybe even holograms. I love video pinball where the ball gets sliced in half or temporarily defies gravity or gets up and walks away.

Video pinball has been what I mostly rely on. I think Zen make the best current pinball games - raptr says I've played 114 hours of Pinball FX2 and that doesn't seem nearly enough. Silverball Studios (formerly Fuse Games) are also really good, the "Crush Pinball" series, Pokemon Pinball (they should make a new one of these!) and I really like Kirby's Pinball on Gameboy.

On the rare occasions I visit an amusement arcade (seaside resorts, shopping malls), the first thing I look for is pinball. Then arcade machines. It's very rare I can see a pinball machine and not decide to play it.

I never really thought I would own a pinball table. It was just one of those things that you think "ah, maybe one day I will own".

And yet...

This is sitting in my house. It's mine! It's mine! There were 4028 of these tables made in the entire world, and this one is mine. And it plays beautifully.

For years now I have thought "if I was going to own a pinball machine, it would be that Elvira one". I had vague fond memories of having played an Elvira table with googly rubber monsters and a spinning feature at the back. I think it was while holidaying at Hemsby, near the back of an arcade called "The Dunes". It's not even called that anymore. It was years later when I could identify this table by name. "Scared Stiff".

This machine has everything I'd want. It is fairly easy to play and do well. It has various missions to complete, so there's progression in the gameplay. The playfield is nice and varied, and the spinner in the back box is a cool feature, and really beautifully executed with 3 layers of artwork surrounding it. It has a sexy / funny theme, doesn't take itself seriously at all, and features full voicing by Elvira. It's got little cheesy monster finger puppets and plastic frogs. All the replacement parts for this machine are still obtainable. It's a good one to own.

Read the story of how we got it by following this "Read More" link:

Jeff Minter demoed his new game TxK at Play-Expo

We went to Play Expo in Manchester on 12th/13th Oct 2013. A big gaming event, full of new games, old games, tournaments and cosplayers. And pinball and pinball and pinball. =D

There demoing a new game was Jeff Minter, the legendary creator of a lot of my favourite old games. :) So as soon as I entered the hall, I made a beeline towards his stand and tried his new game! (it wasn't crowded; he was competing with the PS4, Nintendo, and Oculus Rift after all)

It's called TxK, and is a Tempest-type game for the Playstation Vita.

Despite not being a finished game, it plays pretty solidly; you move along the rim of the field (which may be crazy shaped), shooting forward at the enemies who are coming towards you and firing in various patterns. Sometimes they drop power-ups (always in the same order), and they give you various abilities, one of which is the ability to jump, which is super-handy because it lets you get out of the way and shoot enemies that have made it to the rim.

For this reason, it gets very hard if you miss a power up. My reaction to that is "get better at the game", but I don't know if that makes for a good game mechanic for other players. It's a problem I have with a lot of the old Taito shoot-em-up arcade games from the 80s (Darius? Gradius? I forget...) where you are doing great, but lose a life and since you also lost your power-ups, you're very vulnerable and lose all your other lives very quickly. At least with TxK, the levels are short - it makes it not so hard to recover from a mistake.

There are also (a very limited number of) smart bombs that kill all the enemies at once, which you can activate by touching the screen.

Sometimes, I'm not sure what causes it, but you get a triangle awarded. They appear at the top right of the screen. I eventually collected enough of them (four, I think) and was treated to a bonus stage. In the bonus stage, you had to fly through rings, but I didn't immediately work out the controls so I missed and it ended the bonus stage early.

In this photo, my boyfriend Rich is on the left, Jeff is in the centre and I'm on the right. Jeff's co-programmer Giles very kindly took the photo.

Rich was pouring praise upon Jeff and talking about arcade controls for iPads because they had Gridrunner in a mini iPad arcade running. But at the same time, Rich said that he was afraid to try this new game because Space Giraffe had scared him off, because he's no good at it. Jeff said that TxK's a lot more straightforward and less "out of your head", which it is. So he had a go.

When I eventually got a word in, I let Jeff know that I think Space Giraffe is the best game he ever made. He agreed with me. I told him why; because it's completely different and new kind of shoot-em-up, that you play it with your ears, instead of just your eyes. And he was delighted to meet someone who gets it.

I also told him that TxK might be the game that makes me buy a Vita, that I've been playing his games since I was very young (I found a scorebook in my parents house that documents me beating them at Gridrunner when I was pre-school!), and that his games are probably the reason my boyfriend is convinced I was dropped in a large vat of drugs as a baby. :)

I also told him he should make the 1-ups in TxK look less threatening, because I avoided them twice, thinking they were projectiles. They're pink and say "1-up", but they look like bullets!

Meeting Jeff Minter and playing his new game, that's a super awesome day. But connecting on Space Giraffe, and letting him know what a great game I think it is, I felt like I had just done something to fix the world. Just a little bit. :)