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Puzzle Games & Dragon Games

Friday, December 20th, 2013

Last year my gaming habit seemed to decline noticeably, with 15+ year lows in both the number of games purchased and the total dollars spent. Has that trend continued? Let’s find out…

In 2013 I purchased only 50 games. This was the first time since 1994 that my average had dropped below a game a week. Given I now include iOS purchases in my data, this is significant. The fact is I am simply not buying as many games as I used to, and I doubt I will ever return to the early 2000’s when I was purchasing an average of 2+ games a week.

Despite buying fewer games in total, my dollars spent increased about 20% from last year to about $1300, or an average of about $26 a game. This was a more than 60% increase on the amount spent per game since last year, almost entirely due to my decline in iOS spending in the last year.

Here are the plots:

The above is a percentage breakdown of games per system. I’ve included the 6 months of World of Warcraft subscription as one purchase for Macintosh. Comparing to last year the decline in iOS games downloaded is notable. This is for two reasons: I download fewer iOS games, and I don’t track free game downloads. If you’re not following the iOS gaming scene, free-to-play is fast becoming the norm.

Above is the percentage breakdown of dollars spent per system. Obviously iOS amounts to very little since the games are rarely more than a dollar or two. The 3DS dominates this list, both because of the high amount of purchases and the $40 price point for games.

The trends this year were:
1) More dollars spend on PS3 and 3DS
2) Fewer dollars spent on PSP and DS (both are ‘dead’ systems now and may disappear from these lists next year)
3) A sharp decline in total iOS games and total iOS spending

What the charts do not show is how much time I spend gaming, and I truly wish there was a way to measure that. My feeling is despite the downward trend of purchases, I don’t spend significantly less of my free time (and that’s key) gaming. I may game less overall due to the increase in work responsibilities and vacations (I’ll spend about 6 weeks away from home on vacation this year), but when I’m home I still play a lot. Actually, I play even away from home, and you’ll see why in a moment…

There was also the fact that 2013 was a year with several ‘epic’ games, by which I mean games that kept my attention for very long periods. These included World Of Warcraft, Monster Hunter 3U, Dragon’s Dogma, Pokemon X, Tales of Graces f and my game of the year (below). Indeed, some of these (especially Monster Hunter or Pokemon) I could have just kept playing but put aside to devote time to other games.

So onto the lists! As with last year, let’s start with the biggest disappointments in reverse order:

3) New Super Mario Brothers U (Wii U) – Come on Nintendo, it’s like you’re not trying. Just as the 3DS game from last year was a disappointment, so too was this Wii U game. It’s not a bad game – in fact it’s actually quite good. But as a Nintendo game, and a Mario game, and as a game that desperately needs to sell a failing system to consumers, this simply wasn’t good enough. And it certainly wasn’t as good as it could have been. Let’s hope they have remedied the situation with the recently released Super Mario 3D Land for Wii U (which I hope I get for Christmas)

2) Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon (3DS) – Farming the sequel of a beloved game to a third-party isn’t a great idea to start with, but that’s not the real issue here. The problem with this graphically excellent and technically impressive showcase of the 3DS is that it lacks any sort of a soul, and becomes more of a ‘checklist simulator’ than a game. I loved this the first few levels, and hated it the last few. It wasn’t half the game Luigi’s Mansion was.

1) Goat Up 2 (iOS) – Again, not a bad game. In fact it’s quite a good game, and a fun spiritual throwback to the C64 days of yore. But it was disappointing for two reasons: i) It’s not as good as Goat Up and ii) It’s apparently Minter’s last iOS game. Boo hoo. I played this one for an hour maybe. I played Goat Up for at least ten times that.

So what were my favourites of the year? Well in a year of truly great games three stood above all others and gave me hundreds of hours of fun. In reverse order:

3) Dragon’s Dogma (Ps3) – This was the game in which Japanese developers tried to ‘out Skyrim Skyrim’ and in my opinion they succeeded. A massive open world RPG with complex battle systems, a fascinating story and – honestly – almost unbelievably good graphics (watch that video!). This had been out for ages when I bought it (for about $15!) and I was just amazed by how good it was and how much I enjoyed it.

2) Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate (3DS and Wii U) – A game that deserves the ultimate in it’s name. The biggest and by far the best MH game yet delivered in spades and when I finally put it aside I’d spent over 300 hours playing between my 3DS and Wii U (since the game allowed for save file transfer to play on the small or big screen). The online multiplay in particular was amazing, especially when you got into a group of skilled players and worked together to defeat one of the mega-bosses like Dire Miralis or a Stygian Zinogre (as in the above video).

1) Puzzle and Dragons iOS (iOS) – Yes, you read that correctly. A free iOS puzzle game is what I consider the game of the year. I can just hear Florence shaking her head in disgust! I was aware of this game before our Japan trip, but didn’t know quite how popular it was over there. I have since learned that ten percent of Japanese people play ‘PazuDora’ and I believe it: everywhere I saw people playing it, especially on trains. I downloaded it during our trip and… well today was my 200th consecutive login day! You can see from the video this is more than a match-3, since it involves monster collection, team building and a lot of skill making matches during the rounds (the player in the video is no amateur!). The game starts easy but quickly becomes very, very complex and in addition to it being fun I enjoy the challenge of team-building and beating the often very difficult ‘descend’ dungeons. I don’t see myself giving up on this game any time soon either. It’s as far as I am concerned, the ultimate phone game 🙂

So how was your gaming in 2013? Did you play more or less? What were your favourite games of the year?

Posted in Blog, Games, Miscellaneous, Otaku, Tech, Time | 3 Comments »

Sleep Now, Sweet Daisy

Tuesday, December 17th, 2013

Back in July 1997 Bill Clinton was president, Men In Black was topping the box office and gas cost $1.22 per gallon. I suppose this was all well and good at the time, but what made the month really special was the birth of a cat that would be named Daisy. Of course we didn’t meet Daisy until she was a few months old – in September to be precise – but she endeared herself to us immediately.

There she is, only a day or two after we got her! Impossible cute, full of energy and a real terror to the other two (Ziggi and Bootsy) we had in those days. As with all kittens her preferred activity was endlessly running, in her case up and down stairs carrying a fluffy pink toy with her. She also enjoyed chasing feathers and laser pointers, and was particularly good at jumping many times her height.

As all cats do, Daisy grew up and slowed down a bit, but was always there. She was not a cat that hid. If she wasn’t in your lap she’d be on the floor in plain sight, often in her preferred ‘arms crossed’ pose.

Daisy is about four in the above photo. She became a big girl quickly, and her fur made her seem bigger. But she was always the most well behaved cat we had, and developed a sort of matronly personality. She was always aloof around our other cats, but we always suspected she liked them better than she was prepared to reveal. This was proven after Bootsy died and Daisy for a short while was our only cat. In those days she would wander the house and cry a lot. She was lonely. We think she was overjoyed when we welcomed Yossie into our lives, although the tables had now been turned and the then nine-year-old Daisy was now the one being terrorized by a kitten 🙂

As Daisy grew older she had trouble grooming and we started having her shaved. As she grew older still she developed a thyroid problem that required daily medication. But she was still her happy, personable self. A cat that loved a lap, and loved a pat, and slept with us on the bed every night. She was a small thing and yet such a large part of our lives: the only one of our cats that had been with us through many jobs, many homes and so many of our years. The fact she had known Ziggi and Bootsy was special as well; we’d tell ourselves that Daisy would occasionally tell Yoss and Emi about their wonderful departed ‘brothers’.

After 16 long years Daisy left us yesterday.She had sharply declined over the weekend, and when we took her to the vet they found a lump and – although it’s the most awful decision to make – we knew it was time to say goodbye.

Daisy was always warm, always happy and always loved. While the sadness is still so very profound for Kristin and I, Daisy is now sleeping, hopefully dreaming forever of feather toys, laser pointers, catnip binges and a comfortable sleep in her mum’s lap.

Farewell Great Queen Daisy, you will be forever missed.

Posted in Family, Pets, Time | 3 Comments »

I Wish We Aged Backwards In Time

Sunday, December 15th, 2013

So I could see something like this live:

Posted in Music, Time | 2 Comments »

The Sticker Collection

Sunday, December 8th, 2013

I have in my possession an old, yellowing tupperware container full of stickers. This is a collection of mine that started back when I was a child and continued up until my mid teens. Many (most!) other of my possessions from those days are long, long gone. But the sticker collection remains. For various reasons I was never able to discard it, and it lingered in the back of a closet even up until I left Australia.

It was then passed on to my brother, who himself kept it safe for many years. He ended up bringing it to America with him when he moved here and on my first trip to visit him in San Jose he returned it to me. What a reunion! Soon after it was placed back into deep storage, in our attic to be precise, but the other week I dug it out (if only to remind myself I still had it) and opened it for a look.

And what a trip down memory lane that was!

That’s a shot taken just now, with the stickers all over my desk (and on the drawer to the left) as I was scanning them. There are many hundreds, in all shapes, colours and sizes. I was particular about my collection, and happily took anything that could be ‘stuck’ (and hence was a ‘sticker’) including doubles. I have dozens of certain stickers.

Did I buy them? No, not at all. The very vast majority were free, collected either from trade shows (industry stickers), from shops (marketing stickers), from food or toy packaging (licensed stickers) or from clinics/hospitals/school (safety stickers).

In this lengthy post I’ll give a few examples of the many different stickers, with a focus on the more nostalgic variety. (Because of the way I manipulated the scan files, the sticker images in this post are not to scale.)

I have a great many souvenir stickers, from many classically Australian towns: Nyngan, Trangie, Bourke, Cobar (the copper city of the west!). I doubt I ever visited any of these, which means the stickers were given to me as a souvenir or I swapped them from someone else. The sticker shown on the left above – typical of many of these – includes instructions on the back which basically summarize to: “Stick this on something”! Amusingly, almost all these stickers include sheep in the coat-of-arms. I guess it’s true that sheep are everywhere in Australia 🙂

Radio stickers were commonly distributed in record shops. The idea was to put them on your bumper and possibly win a prize if your license plate was read on the air. I never did this (of course), and instead hoarded the stickers. I have stickers for about a dozen radio stations, including 2NUR, 2KO, JJJ (many varieties) and even a Queensland radio station! Where did I get that?

That’s one of three stickers of which I am even today quite proud of, since that’s for my uncle’s (Peter Sheely) surfboard company. Sheely stickers were one of the few I ever actually stuck on things (schoolbooks mostly) since I could use my contacts to get more 😉

I find the stickers with dates to be quite interesting. The oldest sticker I have seems to be the one advertising the 1977 tennis tournament, and the youngest seems to be from 1988 (when I was 16). Stickers can be educational as well: who knew that in 1979 Australia apparently had an argentine ant infestation? It’s a good thing Inspector Anteater was on the job!

Oh, and what the heck is this:

I doubt we went to this event, especially since I don’t know where Blacktown is. But mysteriously I have not one or two but three different stickers advertising it! That’s a mystery that will never be solved…

Safety stickers, like those above, were given out at school or (more commonly) at free clinics that were held at malls or sometimes libraries. The best way to teach a child safety is to give him a sticker I suppose. In those days I don’t recall people sticking stickers on shops or cars or street signs like some do today, so they seem to have been more commonly used for marketing.

We’ll call the above ‘brainwashing stickers’. I have a lot of these as well, including anti-littering, save-the-animals, save-the-water and (a whole bunch of) religions ‘I love being a christian’ stickers. For children in the 1970s and 1980s, much education was accomplished via the distribution of stickers!

Speaking of marketing, I’ve got a good selection of food promotional stickers all showing off the logos and design sense of 197X. I don’t think any advertising exec these days would ever use the word ‘peddler’ in his jingles, do you? The UFO’s sticker – for a type of snack chip product (think flavoured, shaped cheetos) makes me want to eat a bag right now!

Speaking of marketing, I have a few high quality ‘shop window’ vinyl stickers. I have absolutely no idea where I got them from, since we didn’t know anyone that owned a shop. They are all quite massive and don’t fit in the scanner. Here’s a classic:

That sticker has to be 25+ years old now, and I believe Chiko Roll still uses similar marketing today! Seeing this sticker, and posting the image, makes me want to eat a Chiko Roll for the first time in my life. Watch for that event during the Australia trip…

A couple of stickers for long-dead Newcastle restaurants. As a child I used to love going to The Beefeater since it seemed posh and special. I bet viewed through adult eyes it was a bit of a dirty very amateur theme restaurant 🙂

Smash Hits stickers! Yes, I kept everything. I wonder how many other unstuck Icehouse stickers exist in the world today?

On the subject of keeping everything, here are some true gems of the collection:

I’m pretty sure I nicked the above from a clothing store called ‘Best & Less’ when the employee wasn’t looking. I actually have three, in different amounts. It’s obviously designed for a store display, and is about 20 cm long. It’ll be handy if I ever have a sale!

The above somewhat boggles my mind. But hey, it’s a sticker!

The above was designed for a math contest that I entered (and actually won)! At the time I was probably more excited by the $50 prize, but now I’m happy I kept the sticker.

Of course with hundreds of stickers including many that are – let’s face it – borderline garbage, I had to have my favourites. And I did indeed, and they were almost all the licensed stickers. These came from cereal, bread or ice-cream boxes and the nature of their distribution meant I only have a rare few of each. Back in the day these were the creme-d-la-creme of my collection, so be impressed:

The smurf sticker (which is about 4 times the size of the Pac man one) probably came from a BP station and was free with a gas refill. I’d bet the Ms. Pac Man one came from a box of Pac Man ice-creams. Here’s another sticker that clearly came from an ice-cream box:

What a beauty! Looking through my collection photo stickers are very rare, but to have such a nice one from 1979 – and Star Trek no less – surely elevated this guy to highest echelons of my collection! It shared that spot with:

OMG! Nine different painted ewok stickers that were used to promote the Ewok Adventure film (in 1984). It’s a real mystery where these guys came from, but just look at them. This would be a real treasure for ewok collectors…

And then, Star Wars! These stickers are big (about 10 cm tall) and there were a lot of them for all the major characters. I have five different ones, many in duplicate, and am sure I once had many more because I stuck these on schoolbooks as well. Back in those days Star Wars was a mania of mine; I would have prized these. Incidentally I have no idea where they came from. I very much doubt they were food promotions due to their size. Anyone remember?

So what could have possibly exceeded Star Wars to 12-year-old me? Feast your eyes on this trio:

I’m sure we all remember fondly the Power Lords toy/comic line that was introduced by Revell in 1983 to compete against Masters Of The Universe? You don’t? Shame on you! As a kid I got some of the figures, and probably liked them enough, but I loved the stickers that came with them! Raygoth! Gripptogg! Such fantastic names. These stickers are big, colourful and I loved, loved, loved them. They were, quite simply, three of the best four stickers that I owned.

And this was the very best:

Lord in heaven a glitter skull sticker! This was the very pinnacle, the sticker so good it could never be stuck. This was also purchased by me, and I remember exactly where: Angus & Robertson in Garden City. I actually purchased two stickers that day, the other being a similarly glittery striking cobra design. That second sticker is no longer still with me, so I imagine it was stuck somewhere, but the skull is still waiting. This sticker has powerful nostalgic value for me these days, and still is in fantastic condition and tremendously glittery when viewed in the right light.

So where should I stick it?

Posted in Art, Books & Comics, Family, Food, Miscellaneous, Movies, Music, Nature, Otaku, The Unknown, Time, Toys | 4 Comments »

The Final Experiment

Friday, November 22nd, 2013

“Doctor, what does this experiment do?”

“Oh it’s just some testing to see I’ve put the TARDIS back together again. I need to be sure before I switch her back on.”

Jo was bored. The Doctor had been tinkering for days and after the excitement of the previous week there wasn’t much going on at UNIT headquarters. Even the Brigadier was on leave. To make matters worse the Doctor had been acting quiet, even pensive. Jo had a feeling she knew why.

“Doctor, I have a question. A personal question. I know you don’t talk much about your past but…”

The Doctor stopped adjusting a circuit and gave Jo his full attention. “How can I help you Jo?”

She took a deep breath. “Well, I was wondering. That man we met during the Omega thing. Was it really… you?”

To her relief the Doctor smiled broadly. “Josephine Grant! I was wondering exactly when you would ask.”

He momentarily returned to his work, but she knew him well enough to recognize that he was debating how to answer. Although she’d only met the ‘other Doctor’ briefly, she remembered just how different he had looked and acted. For one, he didn’t think as much before speaking, that was sure!

“Yes Jo. He was me, or rather I am him. And he’s not the only one. There are many of us. Many of me.”

Jo knew the Doctor wasn’t human. In a job that frequently meant fighting alien threats that wasn’t any harder to believe than what she may discover any other afternoon. And yet she didn’t think about it much because in so many ways he was human. “How many of you are there?”

“A dozen. Maybe more.”

“Have you met them all?”

“Some. It’s difficult and dangerous, but occasionally we… co-operate.”

The doctor put down his work and headed toward the TARDIS. “Come with me Jo. I want to show you something.”

After the Omega incident, the Doctor had been rewarded by his people with the knowledge of how to operate his TARDIS again. Jo had never seen him so excited, and he had barely slept since that day, spending all of his time putting all the TARDIS equipment back inside and testing all the circuits. This experiment was apparently the last, and the craft would function once again. She followed the Doctor inside and found him standing by the console waiting for her.

“Jo, as you know I’m not human. My race is called the Time Lords, and we come from a planet called Gallifrey. This is my craft, called the TARDIS. It has the ability to travel anywhere in space or time.”

“I know that Doctor. You’ve told me many times before.”

“Hush Jo, let me finish.” The Doctor grabbed the back of his neck and sighed.

“What I haven’t told you is that my people have developed a technology that allows us, when we die, to regenerate our bodies. This allows us to live many lives. When it happens, while we remain the same person, we are also different. That man you met last week was a previous me.”

Jo was amazed. And he said there were a dozen or more of him? “The others you mentioned? Are they from your past or future?”

“Two are from my past. Most are from my future.”

“And you’ve met them?”

“Yes Jo, some of them.”

“What are they like?”

The Doctor laughed again. “They are different Jo. Some are younger, some are older. None are cleverer though.” He winked.

“Can I meet them?”

“Perhaps, one day. As I said, it’s difficult. Even I don’t know when it may happen and couldn’t control it if I tried.”

She considered what he had said. The Doctor was rarely this personal, and before last week had never mentioned this aspect of his life. She wondered what else she didn’t know about him.

“So if some are from your future, that means you will regenerate one day?” As often happened Jo immediately regretted the question.

“Yes Jo, I expect one day I will.”

The Doctor grew quiet. Jo knew she had stirred a thought that she perhaps should not have, since he had said that regeneration followed death. She approached him,

“Doctor, I just want to say something. We have a very dangerous job, and many times we – you – have been in great danger. If I think about this too much I get scared, and many times I’ve thought about quitting. But what keeps me here is you, because you are the bravest and most caring and most heroic man I have ever met. It makes me very happy to think that there are many other Doctors out there being brave and caring and heroic for other people like me. Even so, I’m so happy that you are my Doctor and I never want to swap you for any of the others!”

The Doctor gave her a long look, stroked his chin and, after a few moments, smiled once again.

“Thank you Jo. I sincerely appreciate that.”

He looked around the control room. While he had been fitting the circuits Jo had been cleaning, and the console shone under the bright lights. Only a few days ago his knowledge of how to operate the TARDIS had remained clouded, but now it been restored, and he sensed that adventures in time and space were only a few button presses away.

“I think it’s time we finished this final experiment. I want to get the old girl working again, and I think it’s about time we took a vacation, don’t you?”

This was music to her ears. The Doctor was offering to take her somewhere in the TARDIS. This, she hoped, would be something to remember.

“Oh yes Doctor! Can we go somewhere sunny? Oh, oh, can we go to the ocean?”

Any place, at any time, and she wants to go to the beach! This was why he loved humans, and why he was going to miss these days of exile. Even with his TARDIS working again, he supposed he may return to this planet every once in a while…

The Doctor smiled once again, a twinkle in his eye.

“Ok Jo, I’ll take you to an ocean.”

Posted in Time | 4 Comments »

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