63 and 1/3

I bought a copy of ClayFighter: Sculptor's Cut for Nintendo 64 today... $30 even, at a flea market; it's usually ~$50 + shipping on eBay :) Not a great game, but certainly a rarity as it was a rental-only Blockbuster-exclusive title.

Oh, fuck off!

I thought I was being all subversive in the wake of Bioshock 2's canceled PC DLC by buying a used copy for 360 today... Only to get home and read this.

In better news, I finished Ys Seven, and it was great; I highly recommend it despite the cheesy translation. I also picked-up dirt-cheap copies of Sly Cooper and TimeSplitters for PS2. I'd been meaning to try those games for a while now...

Professional

I traded-in my Canadian ColecoVision Expansion Module #1 and snagged a first-generation Atari 7800 ProSystem (the one with the never-leveraged-and-subsequently-covered-over-in-later-hardware-revisions expansion port) last night, along with Asteroids, Ballblazer, Food Fight, and Ms. Pac-Man... No Ninja Golf yet, but it will be mine.

I'm thoroughly impressed with the system from a design standpoint versus its contemporaries, and the advantages are especially apparent with Ballblazer... Seriously, watch this video. Food Fight and Ms. Pac-Man are great arcade ports, and Asteroids is a unique raster-based interpretation of the vector-based arcade original. The 2600 backwards compatibility of the whole thing is a nice bonus, but those stock controllers're kinda whack.

Anyway, I finished Costume Quest, and it was signature Double Fine goodness, complete with familiar tropes and nods to fans throughout the game. It's a simplistic RPG in the same vein as Penny Arcade Adventures; the concept is genius, the presentation is golden, and the short length of the adventure feels just right. It's pretty repetitive, but it never feels like a chore. I highly recommend it.

Christmas in October!

Seriously, yo... The Writer DLC for Alan Wake was a nice little package, Sonic 4 is a great update to the 2D Sonic games, Costume Quest is ridiculously fun (though the text is a little hard to read), and Super Meat Boy is just... I don't even know... Play it! As an added bonus, Super Meat Boy was released on sale and because I bought all of the aforementioned games on XBLA in October, I'm supposedly getting 800 MS points credited to my account next month!

Oh, and I'm really tempted to pick-up an Atari 7800 and track down a copy of Ninja Golf... How I didn't notice that game until yesterday baffles me.

Progress

I just can't wrap my head around the Dead Rising games... They're good, visceral fun, but I hate the save system.

Anyway, I can't wait for Costume Quest and I'm eager to get into the new Alan Wake DLC. I've finished Halo: Reach (solid game, great production values, nothing particularly special though), Scott Pilgrim (amazing experience), and The Secret Of Monkey Island Special Edition (pretty, funny, and satisfying; albeit with some fundamental design flaws), and I'm almost done with Shank (looks great, getting repetitive). S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky is notably arduous and only vaguely interesting so far, but I loved the first game, so I'll stick with it for now.

Really tempted to just pick-up Enslaved... Spear Of Destiny is keeping me busy for the time being though :)

Penguins, Earthworms, and Monkeys

Well, shit.

Anyway, I found copies of Surf's Up and NHL 10 for XBOX 360 and together they cost me ~$10; that's a huge value for two totally sweet games! I also snagged Darkwatch for XBOX as well as a complete copy of Earthworm Jim 2 for SEGA Saturn to replace my disc-only copy. Ooh, and I got in on that $10 Left 4 Dead & Left 4 Dead 2 bundle on Steam!

I've been sick and busy all week, so I've yet to complete the last few missions of Halo: Reach, but I did find the time to install S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky and continue along in The Secret Of Monkey Island.

...And now, demos. Enslaved is totally sweet. Quantum Theory is weak. Vanquish has potential. Hydrophobia is interesting.