Goodies From Mom!

Recently, my mom and my stepdad moved to Texas, which is a HUGE bummer for me. I used to visit them almost every weekend, as they only lived about an hour away. Now they live many hours away! 😦 When they were getting ready to go, my mom decided to give me a couple of gaming related things she no longer used.

One of these things was an almost brand-new Nintendo DS Lite! I remember how excited she was when she got it. She played my copy of Brain Age and decided she really wanted the game for herself. So she got a DS Lite, Brain Age, Brain Age 2, and CrossworDS. She played her DS maybe 4 times, then it was abandoned for years!

Even though I already have an original DS, I gladly took her DS Lite. I figured I would keep this one on my bedside table in case I wanted to play a quick game before bed! Also, she gave me a case, a sleeve, a charger, and a couple extra styluses.

I charged it up and played it, and it works great. I can’t believe how much brighter the screen is compared to my original DS! Anyway, I already had the Brain Age games, so I gave those to my husband. I did keep the CrossWorDS game, though, because I used to play it over at her house and I really enjoyed it!

My mom also gave away her Wii and all the games she had for it. We had a lot of the same games, but I did take a couple of them. These included GT Pro Series…

Excite Truck…

and Wii Fit.

While I do have the Wii Fit Plus, I don’t have the original Wii Fit. I know I don’t really NEED it, since the Wii Fit Plus has all the original games plus more, but who’s going to argue with free? 😉 I’ve never played GT Pro Series, but I do like Excite Truck, so that should be fun. Thanks Mom! 🙂

First Impressions: Harvest Moon: Animal Parade!

Like I first mentioned awhile back, one game that I’ve had for a long time but never played is Harvest Moon: Animal Parade for the Wii. I’ve always thought the game looked adorable (and I love Harvest Moon!) but I just never got around to playing it! Doing the Four in February challenge finally made me start playing it… and I’m glad I did!

The game starts out with you riding on the back of some random dude’s cart off to your new farm. It looked suspicious to me, but my character didn’t seem to mind.

Upon arriving at my new farm, my teeny little friend Finn (who constantly buzzes around my head) asked what the name of the place was. When I saw what was automatically written in for me, I laughed out loud!

Misty just happens to be my cat’s name! Of course, I kept it. So now I live on Misty Farm, haha! Anyway, I took some time to wander around my property, and it’s really cute!

Why the hell do I have to purchase something that’s already on my land though?! Talk about lame!

Anyway, I met the mayor of the nearby Harmonica Town, who told me to go meet everyone.

Never mind meeting the people- first I ran around and approached every animal I could find! 🙂

I then talked to the townsfolk. Most were pretty nice, but on the whole, everyone seemed… depressed.

Why isn’t anything working right around here? After meeting everyone, my next goal was to talk to the Harvest Goddess. First, I had to feed this lame ass guy who couldn’t go get his own food. He needed to fix the bridge, but couldn’t do it on an empty stomach.

I had to go to Flute Fields (another nearby community) to buy him what he needed.

Once he ate and fixed the bridge, the Garmon Mines area was opened to me. I met everyone in town. They, like folks in Harmonica Town and Flute Fields, seemed depressed as well.

I then made my way to the Goddess Spring, where I was stopped by some pissed off animals!

Apparently I needed and “animal whistle” to be able to communicate with them. It was a bit of a wild goose chase to acquire one, but I finally got it. I befriended the animals guarding the Goddess Spring, then walked down the path that led me to the Harvest Goddess!

She explained to me that the elements of earth have all lost their strength and vitality, which is why everything sucks everywhere. She asked the Harvest Sprites to ring their bells, but they were too weak. So now it’s MY job to find the sprites and ring the bells. Uh, aren’t you the Harvest Goddess?! Why can’t YOU do it?!

Conclusion:

I love this game so far! There is a lot of stuff to do, but you never feel rushed! I love all of the characters and the animals are adorable too! I’ve already completed several tasks and I’ve found one bell and restored its power (I just have to ring it!).

If I have one small complaint about the game, it’s the fact that your stamina dips way too quickly. Just taking care of my crops in the morning depletes my stamina way more than it should, and raising it back up requires buying food (that is way too expensive) or eating a stupid mushroom that barely does anything for you. Despite this, I am having a great time with this game! It’s quite a long game, but I hope I can beat it within a reasonable time frame! 🙂

Fangamer Goodies!

A little while ago, I heard about a site called Fangamer.com. I came across it while I was looking to see if there was a strategy guide for Stardew Valley. Though there isn’t an “official” strategy guide, people were raving about one you could purchase on Fangamer. I checked it out, and it looked awesome. After a couple weeks, I decided to go ahead and purchase one!

While purchasing the book, they had an offer where if you bought the strategy guide as well as the coloring book for Stardew Valley, you saved $3! Since I’m a sucker, of course I did it! 😉

Before I checked out, I perused the site to see if anything else caught my eye, and of course, I saw it: an Animal Crossing book! Did I purchase it? Take a wild guess!!! 🙂

I ordered from the site on a Monday, and the books came in that Thursday! Pretty quick! The first thing I noticed when I opened the package was how carefully everything was shipped. Each book was bubble wrapped twice and boxed up neatly. The first thing I unpacked was this adorable Kirby card made by a very talented artist whose Esty shop I need to check out! Also in that package was a small booklet showing some of Fangamer’s other items, an “M” pin from the Kirby series, and… some other thing. I’m not sure what it is from, but it’s still cool!

Second, I opened up the Stardew Valley Guidebook.

It is so adorable and detailed!

So much helpful information in this book! This guidebook is definitely a labor of love.

In with the guidebook was the coloring book!

It’s so cute, I almost don’t want to color any of it!

Excited, I opened up the second bubble- wrapped book and stared down at… Legend of the Hero?

Oh, man. This book looked cool as hell, but definitely wasn’t what I ordered! Bummed, I shot an email over to customer service and explained what happened. In less than 3 hours, I got a very nice reply! The gentleman that sent me the e-mail apologized and said he would send out the correct book right away. He even said I could keep the incorrect book, which I thought was an awesome gesture! I was fully prepared to ship it back.

So, Legend of the Hero is basically a Legend of Zelda inspired book. What I find unique about it is that it does not explicitly state that it is a Zelda book- so someone without any prior knowledge of the Zelda series would probably look at it and think it is a mythology book of sorts. Pretty cool!

Anyway, my correct book was immediately shipped and arrived at my house a couple days later!

This book is incredible! The amount of detail in the artwork and descriptions are so amazing, and this is a book I think every Animal Crossing fan will appreciate!

All three of these books were created and illustrated by Kari Fry, and I am officially a huge fan of her work! I will definitely purchase items from Fangamer in the future. They are quick and very easy to deal with. Even though they sent me the wrong book, they were so quick to correct their mistake and they were extremely nice about it as well. I would encourage everyone to check out their site! 🙂

Why I Love… The Game Boy!

Hey everyone! I feel like I am so far behind on my posts… I normally try to post this “Why I Love” feature on the 1st or 2nd of every month (clearly we are way past those dates), I still haven’t done my recap of my Four in February (in March) results, I haven’t done my First Impressions post for Harvest Moon: Animal Parade, and so on. With everything that has been going on lately, my motivation for producing a halfway decent blog post has pretty much gone out the window.

I’ve slowly been trying to get back to normal, but it’s been hard. I’m getting there though! I just want to thank all you guys for your support and kind comments. I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating: I am so happy to be part of this wonderful community. You guys mean a lot to me and I happy to have so many friends on here! By the way, I’m behind on reading pretty much everyone’s blogs, but don’t worry, I’ll catch up soon! 🙂

Anyway! Blogging is cathartic for me, so I figured it was time I get back to posting! Like I said, I’m a bit behind on the posts I wanted to make, but oh well. I set no time limits for myself, so I’ll get to them when I get to them! 😉

With all of that being said, this month’s Why I Love… post is all about the Nintendo Game Boy!

The Game Boy logo.

Released in North America in 1989, this little gray box soon became synonymous with handheld gaming. And I wanted one!

I love the Game Boy!

My mom said I was watching tv when I was about 6 and an ad came on for the Game Boy. She said I watched it, intrigued, then looked at her and said “I think I would like one of those.” 6-year-old me was apparently very polite! 😉

This isn’t a screenshot of the tv ad, but whatever, you get the idea!

So, my awesome mom bought me a Game Boy that Christmas bundled with Tetris. She bought me one other game simply because the box art looked cute. That game was none other than Kirby’s Dream Land!

I don’t remember if the box looked like this or not!

I was so surprised and delighted that I finally got my hands on a Game Boy! My friend down the street had one, as well as a couple kids in school, so I had played with one frequently. It was so fun to have my own, though! I remember COUNTLESS hours playing both Tetris and Kirby’s Dream Land.

It is always pretty sweet when you get a “tetris”!

When I was young, my bedtime was 9:00 p.m. on school nights. After I got that Game Boy, I would constantly beg my mom to let me stay up “just 5 more minutes” to play! On one occasion I remember I was about to beat Kirby’s Dream Land for the first time, and it was time for bed. Man, did I beg and beg to stay up! She finally agreed that I could stay up until 9:30. I don’t recall if I actually beat the game that night, but having an extra 30 minutes of gaming time was pretty sweet!

I don’t care if this game takes only 15 minutes to beat, it is one of my all time favorites!

I also remember playing Game Boy with my friends all the time. Oftentimes one of us would be playing with 5 or 6 more kids crowded around, trying to see the screen. Since the screen was a little hard to see sometimes, I had a nifty little light/ magnifying device that attached to the Game Boy for easier gaming!

The struggle was real back when screens weren’t backlit!

The Game Boy gave me SO many hours of enjoyment, and I still enjoy the games I have today. I have 35 original Game Boy games (click here to see what I have!).  My Game Boy still works, too! I also got the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance when they came out and have many games for those systems too! The original Game Boy will forever hold a special place in my heart, though, because it was the first gaming system I officially owned!

 

 

It Sucks To Be Writing A Post Like This Again…

It was really sad to dedicate a blog post to my grandfather after he passed away a couple months ago, and here we are again… a few days ago we had to say goodbye to my mother-in-law, who passed away from cancer at the young age of 59.

My mother-in-law was a super sweet lady who led a simple life, never needing or wanting much more than to hang out with family and take care of her animals. She always had kind words to say and would never let anyone leave without giving them a hug and telling them she loved them.

Just like with my grandfather, my mother-in-law is forever immortalized in Tomodachi Life, hanging out with everyone else in the family.

Here she is with my father-in-law…

Her three kids…

And her seven grandkids.

It sucks to be going through another loss so soon, but once again, Tomodachi Life is helping me out in its weird, wonderful little way.

I’ll be back with more posts soon, just wanted to dedicate this one to my mother-in-law. Thanks for reading.