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2024 In Games (Part 2)

Tuesday, December 10th, 2024

Once again I kept track of all the games I played this year, and here they all are. Virtually every one was on the Switch, and for those I played more than a single session, the duration played is listed after my comments.

Etrian Odyssey 1 (HD Remaster): I’ve beaten this game thrice before (on DS and 3DS) and had fun replaying this remake on easiest difficulty. Interesting to see how simple the systems were for this first game in an iconic series. (13 hours)

Star Ocean R: An immensely fun retro remake game with lovely graphics and a charming story, although it clearly rushes the ending. In typical Tri-Ace style, the postgame dungeon was great. (38)

Mon-Yu: Defeat Monsters And Gain Strong Weapons And Armor. You May Be Defeated, But Don’t Give Up. Become Stronger. I Believe There Will Be A Day When The Heroes Defeat The Devil King: A dungeon crawler in the Wizardry style with cute graphics and a lot of repeated assets. Initially seemed for a younger audience, but the brutal difficulty quickly changed my mind. A solid game, and fun while it lasted. (30)

Final Fantasy IV (Pixel Remaster): This was the first Final Fantasy game I ever played (over 30 years ago) and I’ve replayed it many times since. This version is wonderful, and another reason the pixel remasters are fantastic value. (16)

Dead Cells: Return To Castlevania: I ploughed through this DLC expansion and moved on since I’d played the hell out of the base game years ago. A top tier 2d action/platform roguelike. (8)

Undead Darlings: This visual novel / dungeon crawl hybrid had a decent story but the gameplay was slow and ponderous and it needed a few more design passes before release. I gave up after the second dungeon. (5)

Etrian Odyssey 2 (HD Remaster): A wonderful game with lots of depth, fun classes, expansive dungeons but a fiddly quest system. The remake graphics could have been prettier, but I enjoyed this wholeheartedly. (27)

SD Shin Kamen Rider Rumble: A roguelike beat-em-up with popcorn enemies and unsatisfying fights. Should have been much better. (3)

Knight Witch: Some excellent ideas in this Metroidvania bullet hell game, but it needed another playability pass before release, since missing basics like fast travel make parts of it tedious. Bosses are overturned as well. (28)

Final Fantasy V (Pixel Remaster): Another iconic game in the series, and one I have dim memories of since it was never originally released in the USA. I loved the job system and the challenging and varied boss fights. Absolute enjoyment from start to end. (30)

Diofield Chronicle: The production qualities are top-notch, but excessive length exposes weakness of a fundamentally simple gameplay loop. Worth a play if you like tactical RPGs with insane and unpredictable stories. (35)

Wheel Of Fortune: A solid version of the TV quiz show, and fun in multiplayer.

Jeopardy: Another good version of the TV show, albeit potentially unfun since there’s little penalty for buzzing in instantly. The questions may also be a little easy. Wheel Of Fortune is the better game.

Demon Gaze Extra: Fun dungeon crawler with a charming story and even though I beat it on Vita years back I had fun replaying it. Drags a bit a couple of dozen hours in and balancing issues on a few RNG bosses should have been fixed in this remake. (35)

Bloodstained: Ritual Of The Night: A top-tier Metroidvania, which ran surprisingly well on the Switch (considering a choppy launch). This was my second time playing it through, although I didn’t go insane for 100% this time. (21)

No Man’s Sky: The third – and best – of my playthroughs. Once again I just explored the universe randomly until I maxed out my ship and gear and even after 70 hours felt like I’d only dipped my toe into an ocean of content. A fantastic game. (70)

Unicorn Overlord: A masterpiece of design in every area, with beautiful graphics and sound, wonderful and immersive tactical gameplay, and the sort of story and characters Vanillaware has rightfully become famous for. A contender for one of the best strategy RPGs of all time. (45)

Dredge: Fascinating fishing game with a compelling Lovecraftian story. Wonderful setting with moody and effective graphics. I had loads of fun exploring the world, and the game was exactly the right length. Highly recommended. (10)

Fate/Extella Link: A bland musou game with unappealing character designs and combat very much in the shadow of betters in the genre (like the Zelda or Fire Emblem games). One for fans I suppose. (5)

Legends of Amberland: Loving homage to old school Might & Magic games that hit more than it missed. A fun, cozy rpg that didn’t outstay its welcome. (13)

Starsand: Atrocius controls, execrable story and no fun in the gameplay make this weird survival game one for the trash. (1)

Puzzle Bobble Everybubble!: A new version of Puzzle Bobble with an emphasis on multiplayer. Tight controls and simplistic but satisfying gameplay, but look elsewhere if you’re after a good single player mode. (2)

Titan Quest: A competent but unremarkable Diablo clone. Movement is a bit floaty and character development and gear seem to favor the late game which made normal mode a bit boring. Nice graphics in the switch and got better as it continued. I enjoyed it enough to eye the DLC… (35)

The Legend of Steel Empire: I beat this remake of a 1990s shooter on one credit on normal mode on my first play, obtaining 90% of the achievements. (0.5)

Ninja Jajamaru: The Great Yokai Battle: A fun challenge based platform game, with a few other modes on the cart as extras. Took me half an afternoon to beat everything, but I had a lot of fun, (3)

Puzzle & Dragons Super Mario Bros: I took this 3DS game with me when I traveled mid year and got hooked on it again. The systems are archaic compared to the phone version but it still has a lot of appeal! (10)

Legacy of Ys Books I & II: Another replay, this time on the DS. Ys is always a fun retro RPG, albeit a bit frustrating in certain areas. (5)

Ring Fit Adventure: I returned for some more time with this exercise game and gained about 50 more levels and have almost beat the second loop through and yet there’s still more than half the items still to be found?!? A great rpg! (+15)

Fire Shark (Toaplan Arcade Garage): A dated but fun shooter, here perfectly emulated on the Switch. I bought this for the bonus game – Wardner – which I fondly remembered from my youth. (4)

ZeroFire (Toaplan Arcade Garage): Both games in this package are very dated and the default difficulties are insane, but it was fun playing through each in easy mode. Demons World, the extra game, seems almost impossible! As with the previous game there’s an incredible amount of bonus versions and extra content included. (3)

Talisman: A too-slow version of the board game, made worse with choice due to packing in every expansion. The real version is more fun. (1)

Metroid Prime Remastered: Engrossing and labyrinthine with good boss fights and wonderful exploration. I remembered nothing from playing two decades ago and enjoyed it as if it were my first time. (12)

Tiger Heli (Toaplan Arcade Garage): The weaker of the three ‘Arcade Garage’ complications I bought, since neither game on the cart really holds up. That said the nostalgia level was high. (1)

Phantasy Star 4: I’d been wanting to replay this for years, and found it was more vanilla than remembered. Combat is a bit bland compared to FF games, but the music and cutscenes are great. The translation is very dated, but I still enjoyed it to the end. (20)

Risen: Janky Elder Scrolls wannabe hampered by poor controls, lousy graphics and terrible combat. The quest/world design is oppressive and I played this one for longer than I should have. (5)

The Dragoness: Command Of The Flame: A competent Heroes of Might & Magic clone. I liked the challenges on each map, but not the time limits. It plays well and balance is good but it weakens in the endgame and ends up outstaying its welcome. (30)

Sol Cresta: A very late sequel to retro shooters Moon/Terra Cresta that adds all sorts of systems and features but doesn’t quite ‘click’ as I feel it could have. I beat it and moved on. (1)

Etrian Odyssey 3 (HD Remaster): The best of the three remakes with an incredible amount of content. Once again I enjoyed this as if I hadn’t already beaten it twice! (22)

Bloodstained Curse Of The Moon 2: A fun retro platform game spun off the game mentioned above. This was notably easier than the first one (I played last year) and I beat in under 90 minutes! (1.5)

Shining Force: Fun to replay this tactical RPG after 30+ years. Both deeper and more difficult than I remembered, especially in the final battles. This was the game I named my fanzine after! (20)

Nintendo World Championship NES Edition: A ridiculously addictive set of microgames built around speed running NES classics. I beat/unlocked everything and for one mission was ranked #1 in the world! (7)

Darksiders 3: A mostly successful God of War / Souls hybrid. Some wonky controls but the core gameplay was fun enough to overlook. (25)

Brigandine: A repetitive tactical fantasy war game with poor AI and mundane graphics (aside from extraordinary character portraits). No threat to fire emblem. (15)

Touhou Luna Nights: Short and sweet bullet-hell Metroidvania. Fun, but very linear and not as good as it’s made out to be. (5)

Vagante: Harder, uglier and less fun than Spelunky. An overly punishing roguelike that needed more playability and a better reward system. (1)

Class of Heroes: This Wizardry-like is almost a system without a game, and yet strangely compelling in its dastardly way. I got distracted and never returned. (5)

Tevi: Metroidvania with wonderful control and response, but a little linear and the map design is boring. Combat is fun but bosses were tedious damage sponges. I wish they’d license their engine to another studio to make an even better game! (25)

Metal Slug Attack Reloaded: Insanely addictive tower defense game (of sorts) that I played nonstop for days then had to delete to stop playing. In the end I beat every stage with an S rank and was happy to move on. Amazing value for $10. (20)

Into The Breach: Fun roguelike tactical game with small maps and interesting combat. It’s a bit unrewarding though, and I found it too repetitive after a while. (6)

Burnout Paradise Remastered: The same game I enjoyed 10+ years ago, but this remaster gives you the very best cars immediately which strips away all the challenge. I didn’t put much time into this one. (2)

DoDonPachi Dai Fakkatsu: Bullet hell majesty now on Switch. This is a perfect emulation of a punishing arcade classic. Came in a nice box set with a soundtrack and art book. (3)

DoDonPachi Dai Ou Jo Re:Incarnation: This installment of the series was released (in the arcades) before the above, but seems to be much more difficult. One day I’m going to dedicate myself to becoming an expert at this game! (3)

Fight Crab: The answer to the question “What if QWOP was a 3D fighting game about crustaceans?”. Humorously insane, but ultimately a near-unplayable joke game. (3)

Atelier Sophie 2: The Alchemist Of The Mysterious Dream: A charming RPG with a well written story and very likeable characters. Kept me interested until the very end. One of my most enjoyed games of the year. (55)

Legend of Grimrock: KLS and I played this one together and had a wonderful time exploring every part of the dungeon and ultimately defeating the game after finding every secret. A loving homage to Eye Of The Beholder. (18)

Diablo 2: I couldn’t guess how many hundreds of hours I’ve spent on this game over the last two decades, but this year I racked up another six dozen beating hell with a lightning amazon. One of the best games of all time! (70)

Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince: I had fun with this series years back on Game Boy, and was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this new version. It’s Pokémon meets Dragon Quest, and while a bit simple was never boring. (35)

Castlevania: Circle Of The Moon: I’ve always loved this oft-maligned GBA installment in the series, and despite having beaten it ten times in the past, bought the Switch collection and beat it again five more this year! Unlocking all five classes was as much fun as ever. (19)

The Mummy Demastered: Short and sweet Metroidvania weirdly based on that Mummy film from a few years back. Beat it in two sittings! (6)

Pretty Girls Game Collection 2: Probably objectively trashy collection of minigames but I enjoyed unlocking all the art and the mahjong solitaire game was genuinely well done! (15)

Titan Quest Atlantis and Ragnarok: Both DLCs went on sale around Thanksgiving, so I got them and played through again using a new character! This time I enjoyed the game even more than before, and maybe I’ll return again one day. (30)

Ys X: Nordics: I’m still playing this one, but so far I’m enjoying it quite a lot. Ten hours in and the story, combat and exploration have hooked me.

Puzzle & Dragons: As of this post, I’m at 4207 cumulative login days, which is 11.5 years. I’ve beaten every dungeon (and in fact usually do so the day they’re released) and have far more resources and characters than I’ll ever use, but I still play daily. This seems to be the game of my life. (Too much!)

This is a long list: 65 games played in 2024 totaling more 980+ hours (much more if you include Puzzdra). I was asked my favourite hobby the other day and I answered “I don’t know”. I wasn’t being evasive, it’s just that gaming is such a part of my life I often don’t even think of it as a hobby 🙂

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My Superpowers

Tuesday, November 26th, 2024

Flying? Super speed or strength? Invisibility? Teleportation? These are the sort of superpowers everyone always picks. But I’ve always had a very particular list of desired powers, and here they are.

The Punch Through Time would allow me to punch the writer of any letter sent to a newspaper of magazine, regardless of the time that has passed since they initially wrote the missive. This one was devised years ago after reading some of the insane letters printed by Dragon magazine back in the early 1980s. It’s a mysterious and uncharacteristically (for me) violent power that I probably never would have actually used.

With the near-death of print this power could be updated to include online comments, which could certainly keep a wielder busy considering the toxic ‘discussion’ so prevalent online these days. Writers of such comments may think again if a superhero with this power existed.

The Telestrator Of The Devil is a power that would give me the ability to draw on a TV screen so every viewer could view your creations. At the least you could send funny messages to millions, and at best you could strike a blow against untruth, deception and propaganda. While this one was developed after watching too much shopping TV back in the 1990s, it would certainly be more relevant and useful today.

Given that TV is also essentially dead, and that no-one under 50 seems to even know what a telestrator is, this one has also upgraded over the years to the reality-warping ability to change the words on any signs or billboards in the real world. Imagine the fun!

The last power – Franchise Teleportation – is the one I’d most like to have in real life. It’s a simple one: I could teleport between franchise locations. Walk into Maccas in the USA and walk out in Australia or Japan or anywhere else I’d been. This cosmic power had an important restriction: I would need had to have visited the target first. So I couldn’t teleport to any McDonald’s (or Starbucks, or KFC, or Walmart), only between the ones I’d ever visited. If I had this power I’d probably use it almost every day 🙂

Alas I’m no superhero. I can’t bend reality or punch through time or take daily trips to arcades in Japan. But wouldn’t the world be more interesting if I could?

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Halloween Decorations

Tuesday, October 29th, 2024

Halloween decorations seem to have increased both in frequency and size this year. We went for a walk the other day to admire some of them. Here’s some photos.

Many houses that decorate will have pumpkins on their porch, perhaps a few little ghosts hanging from a tree, and maybe a skeletons or skull in their window. This house went all-in with a full-sized skeleton and a gigantic spider web that spans their entire front yard. This isn’t even the biggest web near us: another house covered almost the entire front of the house with a massive web!

This one is a bit low effort but made us laugh: (rubber) body parts scattered on the lawn. On a dark night I think this could be quite scary for a young child, which I feel is in the ‘true’ spirit of Halloween

Just down the street from us they built a small graveyard in their yard which looks great amongst the fallen leaves. As you can see the dead are escaping and climbing a nearby tree. This is illuminated with spooky red lights at night and looks great.

The place around the corner has two massive inflatables (one is Hogwarts!), a looming skeleton with animated eyes and dozens of smaller statues all throughout the yard. Trick-or-treaters will walk through the purple house on their way to the front door. All this is lit at night and accompanied by spooky music.

The place down the road that did tennis playing skeletons years ago now have an incredible Ghostbusters scene. The backpacks and ‘slimer’ ghost are all homemade from cardboard and styrofoam and (we think) the beams light up at night. This is amazingly well done and the sort of display that could win a Halloween decoration contest!

A few blocks away, in front of a house that looks like it could legitimately be haunted, are the biggest decorations we’ve ever seen. Jack Skellington here is 13 feet tall (I checked!) and animated, and only one of five different enormous statues they have in their front yard.

This demon has light-up eyes and towers over me. It’s legitimately creepy and I imagine kids will love it.

And as you can see this headless horseman is almost life-sized as well. I checked online to find a price and there seems to be a few different similar models but even the cheapest is almost $400. And this is just one of five in this houses front yard!

Inflatables remain common, but perhaps not as much as they used to be. Here’s the display in front of our fire station, which as usual will have a haunted house installation this year for parents to take their kids to on Halloween. I like the sausage dog, with a sign (‘Happy Halloweiner‘) that seems removable so he can remain out with his pilgrim hat on as a thanksgiving ornament.

And what of us? It’s been several years since we out any non-pumpkin decorations out, but we splurged this year on our first ever set of lawn flamingos! Of the zombie kind…

Here they are installed next to the creepy face on the tree in our front yard. They’re black with blood red eyes and long sharp teeth, and probably should have been marketed as vampires and not zombies!

And here they are at night, basking in the glow from that demonic face. We won’t be home on Halloween night, but I hope at least one young trick-or-treater sees this and is momentarily spooked 🙂

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Another Year At The Films

Thursday, October 24th, 2024

Kristin and I saw 30 movies this year, some more than once, and all but one at the drive-in. As with previous years we wrote five-word reviews after each of them, and here they are. Since I couldn’t sometimes pick only one, some films have multiple ‘reviews’ 🙂

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire – Best film of the year!
Ghostbusters Frozen Empire – Time to retire this franchise.
Abigail – Original and fun vampire movie.

The Mummy – A decent bootleg Indy film.
The Mummy – The hero murders many people.
Jumanji – Children imperiled by jungle animals.
Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace – Meesa do lika dis film.

Challengers – It’s not really about tennis.
If – Deadpool as an imaginary friend.
Furiosa – Oh what a lovely film!
Furiosa – We didn’t need another hero.

Inside Out 2 – The sequel to Inside Out.
Kingdom of The Planet Of The Apes – What’s with these ape movies?
Kingdom of The Planet Of The Apes – The best character isn’t simian.
Despicable Me 4 – Prequel to Despicable Me 5.

Maxxxine – Mia Goth is a star!
Twisters – Pretty people doing stupid things.
Close Encounters of The Third Kind – Re mi do do sol.

Deadpool & Wolverine – Proof that plot is irrelevant.
It Ends With Us – Unbelievable people living unbelievable lives.
It Ends With Us – It didn’t end fast enough.
Alien Romulus – ‘Goonies with aliens’ doesn’t work.

Grease – The lyrics are so suggestive!
Grease – Sadly it doesn’t include Xanadu.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice – What the hell was that?
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice – Worst film of the year.
Trap – Just another dumb Shyamalan film.
Trap – Appropriately the title rhymes with…

Friday The 13th: The Final Chapter – What happened to the mum?
The Beyond – Far more style than substance.
Friday The 13th Part VI: Jason Lives– He should have stayed dead.
Evil Dead 2 – A well deserving horror classic.

Transformers One – More than meets the eye.
Joker: Folie A Deux – Should never have been made.
The Wild Robot – Robot Jesus saves furry animals.

The Wolf Man – Spoiler: Lon Chaney’s a werewolf!
Dracula – The bats have left the bell tower
Dracula – The victims have been bled
Dracula – Red velvet lines the black box
Dracula – Bela Lugosi’s dead

(Ok, so I broke my 5 word limit for that last one. I’m sure you forgive me!)

With winter fast approaching the drive-ins are once again closed for the season. It was the end of our 15th year going to our closest local drive-in, and we will again buy a season pass for 2025. I hope they’ll have a lot of good films for us to watch next year!

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Dozens Of Things I Didn’t Purchase For Bernard At The Antique Show And One Thing I Did

Sunday, October 20th, 2024

We went to an antique show yesterday, held at a fairgrounds about an hour north of here. It was mostly outdoors which meant it was very chilly in the morning, but we were there five hours (there were 220+ dealers) and the day warmed nicely as it went along.

As with typical antique shops/shops, there were lots and lots of ‘crappy’ (to quote another attendee we overheard) items including kitchenware, clothing, tools, CD/DVDs, VHS tapes and miscellany like the above box of keys. Most of these we gave at best a cursory glance at and moved on.

We saw hunting/fishing gear as well as taxidermy and a fair amount of weapons and military collectibles (including Nazi items). Oh and lots (and lots!) of NASCAR items, toy cars and baseball stuff. Obviously I ignored all of that as well.

Fancy some teeth? They weren’t real, but they were creepy. We also saw leather goods with realistic eyes sewn into them, and a range of extremely weird and creepy dolls of alien fetuses. And lots of Halloween and Christmas goods as well.

I was of course looking for genre items, and many collectors had loads of it, including cases of opened stuff like the one above. The items on show ranged from damaged bootlegs to boxed pristine items from the 1980s. I saw many things I never expected to see at an outdoor antiques show in a small town in central NY.

Old electronics were in abundance, including this home 8-track player with a bunch of tapes. We saw several reel-to-reel and Super-8 players as well as what looked like a portable (very big and undoubtedly heavy) film projector!

Several dealers had Super-8 reels for sale, which I had never seen before. If I had money to burn it would have been fun to buy a player and some tapes for movie night!

There were loads of typewriters, telephones, kitchen electronics and cameras too, many of which I’m sure didn’t work. The above were seen at three dealers, and are examples of three different types of failed home camera systems. Even if you still owned a working camera that used Advantix film, I wonder could you get it developed?

The Colecovision came with a selection of prototype cartridges (it used to belong to a Coleco employee) and the Vic-20 was complete but the guy didn’t know if it worked (which means it likely didn’t). We saw a boxed TRS-80 as well.

While there were loads of console games for sale (especially XBox) computer software was almost nonexistent and the above were the only two I saw. The MS-Dos 6 was still sealed!

This thing was probably broken, and at the very least was missing a battery case cover. It’s intriguing, but I’m sure it’s a glorified calculator and most of the LED elements are probably long dead.

The above were an unexpected find: nearly mint copies of a Japanese entertainment magazine from the 1950s and 1960s. I don’t know much about these, but they were densely filled with photos of singers and actors and would I feel be of great interest to Japanese people on their advanced years. But how did they get to this particular antique show?

In the days before stores tracked frequent buyer credits electronically shops had these stamp books, and this one was full! Someone missed out on cashing this in for credit decades ago 🙂

And if they had maybe they could have picked up – in 1968 – a carton of Superman orange drink! This is an unused and I unassembled carton, and at 56 years old surely must be amongst the very few remaining in existence today?

When we visited the Frank Frazetta museum over the summer we saw examples of his distinctive style, but we didn’t see any works on black velvet! This homage by an unknown artist was an original piece after Frazetta’s famous Conan painting, and I daresay better than it had any right to be!

A lot of dealers had card for sale, and most of those were baseball cards. I saw some nonsport cards, and infrequently some (overpriced) Magic cards. One guy surprised me with boxes of graded Pokémon and Weiss Schwartz cards! Some of these were unreasonably expensive.

A ‘car with a brain’ it says, and the blurb suggests you program the car to drive along a specific route. Did it work? Maybe. Did it keep a child’s interest for longer than an hour? I’d say unlikely 🙂

The ET porcelain… thing… on the left was disturbing (and broken) but not one tenth as bad as the troll statue on the right. Both of these were about a foot tall.

Speaking of ET – and moving into retro licensed merchandise – one guy had an impressive selection of all sorts of stuff from the 1980s. If you liked ET or Star Wars you could have near-bankrupted yourself with his tables alone.

He had about a dozen different ones of these, as well as lunchboxes, craft kits, all sorts of books, pencil cases and many other examples of weird ephemera. It was refreshing to see so many items that were not the usual action figures, and brought me back to those heady days in the early 80s when shops were overran with Star Wars merchandise.

He also had dozens of Planet Of The Apes comics, and this was one of the cheapest. Although with a cover and title like that – not to mention it being the ‘Wildest ape adventure ever‘ surely this should have been the most expensive?

The mere existence of the brain teaser book on the left is noteworthy, but the Battlestar Galactica activity book struck a chord of memory in me, and I’m fairly sure I owned a copy back when I was a mere stripling. This one was in good condition, but most of the pictures had been coloured in and the puzzles and join-the-dots completed.

I had never seen a talking view master reel before. As you can see each reel has a tiny record attached to it, which suggests the viewers had a stylus inside to play them! Note that the record is transparent since it had to let light through so the slides could be viewed. Apparently this technology didn’t work well and was quickly replaced so the sound portion was on a separate cassette.

The above was astonishing: a set of Dick Tracy marbles (and yes, one is Madonna). Those of us old enough will remember that this film was licensed to an unreasonable level but was a forgettable turkey that rightly bombed. I’ve seen lots and lots of merchandise from this film over the years, but this was the first time I’d seen a set of marbles!

The colorforms set on the left was unopened (for over 40 years) and the right is a telephone! Australia wasn’t a big Star Trek market back in those days and we didn’t see much merchandise at all, but based on what I’ve seen over the years here a fan of the show hardly ran out of options in the USA.

And those options included jewelery! The necklace on the left is stylish and would look good around anyone’s next but that prosthetic/earring set on the left: why on earth was this ever manufactured? How big could the market have possibly been? Surely some company lost money on that one?

A ~~Frisbee~~ flying disc and a dress up costume. If I knew a McDonald’s fan I may have been tempted by either…

And speaking of costumes check out this lovely Gremlins mask from the 1980s, which I daresay looks very stylist on my strapping frame. This came in a box set with a (plastic) costume, and I hope someone bought it for their kid and somewhere there’s a little retro gremlin running around this Halloween!

The above shows my pickups – less a rubber stamp which you’ll probably get on a postcard one day. I got some goodies here, and the giant postcards are particularly nice.

What it doesn’t show was the last item referred to in the title of this post. For indeed, one of the many items shown in the 29 preceding photos was purchased for my brother for Christmas since I know he’ll love and treasure it. Can you guess which one?

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