Category: Games

Game Time!

November 13, 2025

Nintendo recently added a ‘Nintendo Store’ app to the App Store. It can be used to make purchases (for your Switch or Switch 2) as well as preorder games and keep track of upcoming releases.

I don’t care about these features and will never use them. I downloaded the app for this:

Once you link your Nintendo account, the app contains detailed gameplay history. And not just for Switch, but also going back through 3DS and even WiiU! You can browse through your entire history of gameplay, which in my case is hundreds of games going back over 14 years. Using this app I learned the first game I played on my 3DS was back on November 29, 2011:

Even before playing this particular game, I had used some of the inbuilt 3DS apps, and they’re included in the data as well.

Switch games even include a record of every time you played a game and for how long, like this:

I was curious about two things, those being the games I had played the most and my longest game sessions. Since you can sort by playtime, these weren’t difficult to find.

As you can see exactly 20 games have been played for more than 100 hours. The list includes five Monster Hunter games, all four Xenoblade games and two games played by KLS (Kingdoms of Amalur and The Witcher 3). The four games on the top row all have over 300 hours of gameplay, and the next six all have over 200 hours. While I have played other Monster Hunter games than the ones listed above, these five games alone were played more than 1100 hours combined (that’s over 45 days). It’s also worth noting that the 3DS data is historical now: the last play date for Puzzle & Crossing Z is several years ago (before the 3DS shop closed) but I’ve played the game as recently as this year.

What about the longest play session?

I really loved Monster Hunter Rise, and played it like a demon when it came out – including a 14.5 hour marathon the day after release. But on June 29, 2022 – the release day of the Sunbreak expansion – I went on an absolute bender. This was during the summer so I was off work and still not traveling because Australia and Japan hadn’t reopened. I had a glorious 18+ session that filled my day, and I believe it was the last time I’ve done such a mad thing 🙂

I found many epic (12+ hour) game sessions, and they occurred for every game with over 300 hours except for Animal Crossing which doesn’t lend itself to marathon play sessions. There were even two consecutive days where I played Diablo II for 13+ hours each day!

This is a cool app, and I wish we could even take it one step further and download the data to analyze it further. If you’ve got a Switch and are curious about your play history I recommend this.

LEGO Game Boy

October 5, 2025

I haven’t bought much LEGO in recent years, but as soon as the above was announced I knew it would be mine. It was released on a workday so I couldn’t go to the LEGO store until after my lectures, and when I got there they only had one left so I left happy. But later on I saw a dozen or more at Walmart so I doubt this is difficult to get.

At 421 pieces it’s not a large set, and it only took me an hour or so to build. It only comes with two stickers (all other labeled bricks are printed) but this is the first LEGO set I’ve bought that includes lenticular pieces:

There’s three of them, and they are the screens. They do a wonderful job of reproducing the iconic colours and draw-in of the Game Boy, and look great in the finished model.

Assembly is easy and fun. There’s many techniques I’ve not seen before used to create a compact model with almost no visible studs. Given the constrictions – it had to reproduce a real product – it’s an extremely impressive design.

The controls all ‘work’. The d-pad can be tilted and the buttons pressed. The contrast and volume dials on the side can be turned, and even the power button can be toggled. Pieces of rubber inside cause the buttons to pop back, and they were very creative using tires placed into slots sideways to make the start and select buttons.

The model comes with two cartridges (Super Mario Land and Zelda: Link’s Awakening) which can be inserted and removed. For the full experience you can exchange the screen as well (which is easy) to match the cartridge.

This is a fantastic kit and it’s truly incredible how well it recreates the original in LEGO. To illustrate, here’s a photo of my original Game Boy next to the LEGO model:

And here’s a LEGO cartridge next to an original one:

An incredible creation by LEGO, and immediately one of my favourite kits of all time. This one will be going on permanent display.

New Japanese TCGs (Part 2)

September 13, 2025

It’s time for four new Japanese TCG packs I obtained on my summer trip to Japan. None of these are particularly new games, but as far as I can tell they are all the latest expansion for their respective games.

Kaiun Collosseum is a kid-friendly TCG with cute art and games that use only 10 card decks. This is the latest expansion (called ‘Great Poop Battle’?) and is one of the very inexpensive (<¥200) types of booster packs.

The cards feature colorful and cute art, but they’re somewhat flimsy and slightly curved right out of the pack. I got a single foil – the card at lower right – but the foiling effect is unremarkable. I’ve actually got a few promo cards for this game in Japanese magazines over the years and they have much prettier foiling and effects.

The cardback is ok, but overall this product betrays its (probably) budget origin and I expect this will be another game that will have a lifespan measured in a handful of years.

Staying with Bandai, here’s the latest expansion in the official Dragonball card game. This game has been going for almost a decade and while it isn’t amongst the most popular in Japan it must still have a devoted fanbase to have survived so long.

The six cards in my pack are above, and while the rare card (middle bottom) is foil the effect is subtle and unimpressive. As is typical of Bandai card games, this one has some incredibly rare and amazingly fancy cards covered in textures and multiple metallic foil effects that go for thousands of dollars on the secondary market. If you’re buying these cards just to collect them, it must be a frustrating prospect.

Here’s the cardback and a bonus card included in the pack. Feel free to use the code 🙂

While this isn’t for me – I’m not anywhere near enough of a fan of the series – this is probably fun for the diehard fans even if just to collect.

Osica is a TCG based around licensed products, and therefore would appeal to the same market as games such as Weiss and Union Divide. This was the latest expansion when I was in Japan, based on the game Atelier Ryza.

The cards are nice enough for fans, and the quality seems higher than both Bandai games. While I’ve played many Atelier games I still haven’t got to the Ryza series so I don’t know who any of these characters are. The foil card is at the lowest right, and the foil effect is so subtle it’s easy to miss.

The cardback is pretty! Probably the best yet in this series. But this is clearly a game marketed at collectors and therefore dependent on the card front design. Is it better than Weiss? I think not.

Lastly we end this post with Divine Cross, (yet) another game with cards based on licensed products. In this case the series seem to be fanservice heavy games and/or anime, and the dozens of expansions have been frequent and fairly small, with only a few dozen cards in each.

I don’t know what this expansion is based on since info is difficult to find online and my translator has trouble with the text on the front of the pack, but it looks to be a Five Nights At Freddy-like horror game (anime?) based around girls hiding from monsters. The cards are dark and frankly boring, and the foil kuchisake-onna (slit-mouth woman) card is repulsive.

If I were to base my evaluation of the game entirely on this pack it would be a strong thumbs-down, but from what I can tell cards in other expansions look wildly different and in some cases are very pretty. An unusual game, this one.

Robot Claw