It's time for our annual "post 'em if you've got 'em" Advent thread, and this year I might very well have gone a teensy bit overboard. (and bugger me, was this all expensive!!)
I was originally going to do this with little printed boxes, but squeeze as I might, the larger of the three objects wouldn't quite fit.
When I saw this calendar on the Amazon, I leapt at it. If the larger item wouldn't fit into the smaller drawers, they would at least fit into the larger ones. And that's the way it is.
So the drawers now contain a crapton of items from either of three categories, large medium or small.
All three categories will be unveiled tomorrow, since the calendar starts off with a nice big drawer! Mmmm...
..Seriously, the cost of this bloody thing!! Thankfully I started work on this mid March, so the cost has been spread through most of the year, but even so. Fuxake, Jay, this is ludicrous!!!
Four Pin badges!
Chibi Chick, Sheriff Kitty, Pony/Unicorn, and "Always Sleepy Club Member"
(All games played on a DS Lite, because the GBAsp screen is bloomin' awful!)
GBA Games
Yoshi's Island : Super Mario Advance 3
You all know how this one goes.
Monsters Inc
A generic little platformer with tiny tiny levels. Walk left to right, but also back and forth (3 layers of back+forth) and ... I'm not sure what the goal is. There are lots of rooms and (of course) plenty of doors, and .. I'm not really sure what I'm doing!!
I can roar at the men in yellow suits.. !?
DS Game
Peppa Pig : The Game
A typical DS era shovelware game for kids.
Tap the bubbles in the bath! wow!
Flip the pancakes! Wow!
And the MOST repetitive background music you've ever heard.
Gaah!!!
Early this year, I got my printable boxes working, and decided they might be nice for an Advent Calendar, but needed something to put in them.
Pin badges would fit nicely.. So I hunted Amazon and found a couple of sets of assorted pin badges, which looked right up the alley.
£65 was spent on two bags of pin badges, along with a couple of hanging display things which, even after several months of being squished flat on the floor under a hefty number of old laptops, still seem to spring into their native folded-up ness, so haven't yet been affixed to the wall like they oughta be.
I might try a bit of blue-tack or some drawing pins or something.. So much for the little stringy hanger bit on them!
A month or so later, I was shuffling around my old handhelds, and the printed box was there.. I wondered.. Could a Gameboy Advance cart fit in the box?!
It didn't.
.. But I could probably print the boxes a bit bigger, right?!!
Sure, why not.
So I trawled eBay, found a job lot of 16 GBA carts for £30 and whipped them up.
I also did the same for DS carts a month later, though being newer games they ended up costing £60. .. But were also a larger collection, so I've got 24 days worth of those! Woot!
I then tried to find ways to print larger boxes, but inevitably failed to get them printable on a single A4 sheet, so ended up hunting for a nice fillable "build your own" advent calendar which would hold everything.
The lovely village calendar has "extra large" drawers, but even then the GBA carts don't "quite" fit into the smaller drawers, what with their little nobbily bits either side, so instead, they only went into the larger drawers.
..
Thankfully I hadn't bought the last remaining 8 GBA carts to fill up the 24 days!!
*sigh*
So much tat, it's insane..
Badges and Badge Holders : £65
GBA Carts : £30
DS Carts : £60
Wooden Village Advent Calendar : £80 (fuxake!)
Total Cost : £235 .. Oh my god!!!
Thankfully that was spread throughout the year, so it's not "too" bad, and the little wooden village advent calendar will be reused in future years, so that's ok.
Badges
Happy Shining Sun
White Four-Leaf Clover
Panda turns his back on us
Sleepy Bunny (I don't think it's supposed to be sleepy, it just wouldn't sit right because of the rounded bottom!)
DS Game
Fashion Designer! Wow, I can be the artist!!
Except I don't think I can. Couldn't find a "Draw a Dress" option, it was all options for pre-drawn dresses, and .. IMHO that's not really the point, is it?
I mean, go back 40 years and you had that Fashion Wheel thing, where you could draw your own fashion onto the ladies. Here, I might be mistaken, but I don't believe you can do that.
Just pick pre-made swatches, pre-drawn faces, pre-coloured hair.
No art skills involved.
Boooooo...
Badges
Skeletor : I'm fairly sure he wouldn't say this
Fish : This fish refused to stay the right way up.. Unless this is the right way up..?
Shark : Live every week like it's AGameAWeek..
And Sleepy bunny two!? Repeat!!!
DS Game
Solitaire DS by Fantastic.TV
Contains an insane 101 variations of Solitaire, so I might end up yoink'ing more than a few of these for the Shoebox!
Quality wise, it has a nice enough interface, but the ingame screen is awfully dull looking, especially when you look up at the completely static top screen and game background. I mean, sure there's nothing going on up there, but could it have killed them to have put little animations or something up there?
But, that's just being nit-picky. It's a great quality game, and the engine's nice and fast. No quarrels from me.
Badges
Tom and Jerry (I'll be honest, this one took me a while, as I was holding it 90 degrees, and thought it was a weird looking grey cloud with an odd wobbly orange moon...)
Lightning (Unless this turns out to be another cartoon character!)
Fried Egg
and a Polar Bear
DS Game
Monster Trucks DS
Get through the convoluted menu, and you get a nicely well-presented 3D racing game, with loads of great big lumpy bits to drive over.
Brum Brum!
.. Though, the Monster Trucks do tend to get in the way of each other whilst driving around! It's great fun when in first place, but the second you're behind another truck, you're .. trucked..
GBA Game
Bratz : Rock Angelz
Hope you're a good reader!
... Hope they're a good writer...
"No one who isn't allowed can enter."
Clunky English, much..!?
The game sees you walking around teeny tiny areas (The DS can do 2x2 screen sized backgrounds, and this seems to be a common theme, going through these games) and chatting to other Bratz&Co, and getting keys and walking a bit more, and .. I gave up I was bored.
Badges
Rainbow!
Coffee!!!!
SUNSHINE!!!!
.. and a lesser cheery, evil looking face thing, which I'm fairly sure is a "something", but I'm damned if I can recollect what it is.
DS Game
Dolphin Island
Straight from the "Explain things to the audience using phrases that people would never use in real life.." handbook
The game involves you clicking items on the island, then having pictures pop up with phrases, then eventually you have to care for all the animals, and it becomes kinda sim-like.
I don't like the camera, though. If you drag the 3D map left or right, the camera tilts in a "oooh, motion!" kinda way, but it REALLY makes me nauseous.
I'm not sure I can turn that off, anywhere.
I might play this some more, depending on whether I can find a toggle for that!
Badges
Cat and a Fish in a Bag
I'm a F***ing Unicorn
Mushroom
and .. .. I want to say it's a white fox..? Could be a cat, but those don't look like cat ears to me.
DS Game
Lego Battles
It's an RTS thing. I'm not 100% sure what I'm doing, though, so I think I'll need to play the tutorial to find out.
The menu is those little lego pieces on the top left of the touchscreen, and when expanded, it's baffling, if I'm honest. I don't know what the icons mean.
I'll have to learn!!
3DS Game?! (When I order the job lot of DS games, they weren't all DS games!)
Asphalt 3D
Select Your Car
Meters for Brake, Revdi-g, Inverse sVre and Faye RuRugard
(yes I know you can read them on the bottom screen, but .. come on, guys!)
Game itself.. .. Not the greatest. The car doesn't feel all that great.
I know you might be thinking "Oh, come on, Jay, this is 1st gen 3DS", but .. We had arcadey car physics sorted in the 80s. That bit should be easy.
Jamie guides you through a list of different recipes. He's there at the start saying the name of the recipe, and he's there at the end saying "Finished", and .. the rest is all text.
Not that that matters, it's an interactive cookbook, and has features like placing ingredients into a shopping list, so you can walk around ASDAs with a DS in your hand, ticking off the things as you pop 'em in your basket.
You'd do all this on your phone, nowadays, obviously, but I bet this was super-awesome to have, back in the day. (2008!)
... Until you realise that things like "Simple sponge pudding" has 12 ingredients..?!!? Thafuq, Jamie, we're on a budget, here!!
There's also a "Cooking Game", but I can't figure out how to do the "pour in some melted butter" step. He's no microwave, so I had to fry some butter on the hob, but now I can't get that butter back to the bowl, as it's stuck in the pan.
.. !!!
GBA Games
Atlantis : Finally a Stargate game!
.. Aww, no it's that Disney thing. Boooo!
Nicely presented, as most Disney platformers are, but lots of elements seem to be hidden away within the garish colour scheme, or at least in the opening level they are.
Looks good, moves nice and smoothly, no grumbles here.
Who Wants to be a Millionaire : 2nd Edition
"Celador" ... No mention of Sony, yet, so the show was still in its ITV origins.
Not much to say, here, really. It is what it is.
Badges
Not a Gameboy, Honest
Bee or Wasp?
T-Rex Rawr
And a hat
DS Game
.. The hell does that even say?!
Good grief, the wall of text starts before you've even put the bloody cartridge in.
Maaan.. Did DS games really look this bad?!
The physics are TERRIBLE in this game. I know I grumbled about Asphalt 3D the other day, but that was pure arcade heaven compared to this.
Feels like I'm driving a Fork-Lift.
GBA Games
The Sims : Pets
I don't know what I'm doing, but mostly because I skipped SO MUCH TEXT, Oh my god the text...
It's the SIMS.. And yet they're having full-blown text based storyline conversations that hold the keys to a tutorial!?
WTF is going on!?
Graphically, the engine looks absolutely blindingly good, and if they'd have somehow managed to build an actual "The Sims" that works with a Dpad+A+B+Start+Select+L+R, then this would've been spectacular.
Instead, shovelware isometric wandering and talking.
Booo..
Early touchscreen games, and how not to make them.
Right off the bat, the menu is horrifically garish, resembling one of those "5000-in-one" knock off game collections, and every tap of a menu button brings about a BLAM!!! sound effect
Throughout, Drag doesn't function, everything is a tap.
From the rip-off Bejewelled clone where you have to tap one, then the other, to the Klondike Solitaire where you have to.. .. tap one, then the other.
Everything is tapping, and it's most evident that Drag is lacking when trying to play the Basketball game, where instead of "fling the ball towards the hoop", you're instead presented with...
Tap the player when the moving hoop is in line with them..
...
.. and all the players are identical...
.... Because that's normal.
Badges
Cactus : Incredibly shiny
Flowers : Two the same, but different!
Camera : To take a photo of the lovely cactus.
DS Game
Cooking Mama 3!
You all know how these games go. Simple touchscreen mini games, each one dedicated to a different cooking/preparation technique. Chop the veggies, mix the dough, boil the potatoes, pretend to be a goose..
They're really nicely presented. No quarrels from me.
... Has it become Festive themed because it knows it's nearly Christmas?!
Badges
BearTV
Rabbit in a Bunny
Books Lover
And a shifty looking chick
DS Game
Lego Lord of the Rings
You know how these games work, I don't need to explain it!
I must say, however, the DS's limitations are showing here.
The camera's practically up the arse of the player, it's that close! You can barely see two hobbit-feet in front of yourself.
Badges
A yellow flower
"Plant Lady"
What appears to be the wolf after he's eaten Red Riding Hood...
And.. .. I dunno, some stars and circles or something!?
3DS Game
Combat of Giants : Dinosaurs 3D
Sure does look nice, especially with 3D switched on.
But.. Gameplay wise.. Kinda getting Rise of the Robots vibes.
It's meant to be a fighter, but is more of a "Push the button, wait and watch the animation, try to push the next button before the enemy attacks but good luck because your previous animation isn't done yet." sort of fighter.
Not so keen on this, if I'm honest.
DS Game
1001 Touch Screen Games
Oh boy, talk about over promising.
If you have a Bejewelled clone, and you have 50 different layouts .. Those are layouts.. .. Maybe don't count that as 50 separate games?!
And if you have 10 different rulesets of Spider Solitaire, with differences like "1 deck" or "2 decks", and so on.. Maybe those should be Rules.. Not counting towards the "Games" count.
And don't get me started on the wordsearches, where each set of words also counts as separate games..
You can very obviously see how this very quickly plummets to being about 20 or so touchscreen games.
And they aren't very good games, at that.
Badges
Sunglasses
Something leafy
Tomato
and Shamrock or Clover.. You decide!!
DS Game
More Brain Training
Stacey hadn't trained her brain since January 2010!
.. And apparently I need to do a lot more of it.
GBA Games
Disney Princess
A collection of platformer&akin games.
Each princess seems to have their own style of game. Snow White is a platformer, Ariel swims around, Jasmine flies on a Magic Carpet, and Cinderella cleans the floor..
They're not "terrible" games..
They aren't great, though.
Scooby Doo - Cyber Chase
Looks lovely. Can't fault the art. I mean, it's Scooby Doo. If you do that art style wrong, you're not paying attention!
It's a "Wander and find clues" sort of game.
..
But.. OMG!! The music..
: Download
Badges
Cloud again
Rainbow again
Pineapple again
And a dinosaur
.. Lots of repetition, today..
DS Game
Metroid Primt : First Hunt
Well, this is just a demo.. If you've owned an original DS, you own this cart, and in fact I found my original just the other day whilst trying to figure out where I'm going to be putting all these DS/GBA games.
Having just played it..
... Damn, that's a good engine!
Really does showcase what could be done with the DS.
Bravo!!
GBA Games
Spiro - Season of Ice
I already have this game in my collection, too. Not getting a lot of newness, today!
This is a nice decent game, but playing it reminded me of how close the camera was. GBA Devs really needed to use smaller sprites to make things seem larger, but they all appeared to prefer to use giant sprites, which clogged up the screen and fought against the small resolution.
Ho-hum.
Spirit - Stallion of the Cimarron
Can barely see a bloody thing. Everything's white!!
Also - AARGHHH!!!!!
: Download
Use better instruments, for smeg sake!!!
Badges
Bee Kind (So close!)
A playboy bunny!?
A Smile ticket
And a daisy that has "88-08-18" written on it.
18th of August 1988? 1888? Not sure.
If anyone knows the significance of this, let me know!
DS Game
SmackDown vs Raw
Honestly, just couldn't be arsed with this one. No patience, me!
Start with a menu, click "Quick Play" choose the fight style, choose the character, choose the opponent, choose the ring, the game finally starts.
...
No, wait, each character has to walk into the stadium. "\o/yeay\o/ it's X Character", the crowd cheers, the character walks around to the ring..
....
And then the other character..
blah, blah.
Then the "fight" starts.
Three icons appear onscreen, and you tap or swipe or something, I'm not sure what, because they expect you to swipe/tap/etc within about half a second, and I'm really not ready to do that yet, as I'm still trying to figure the game out.
Nah, I gave up.
I'm sure this was fun, back in the day, or if you give a shit about wrestlings.
Badges
Happy Frog
Happy Flower
Happy 8-bit Unicorn
And a clapperboard
DS Game
Zoo Tycoon DS
Works well enough, but if I'd be Mr Grumble-Pants, it's a shame there's no way to flip the top and bottom screens.
The interface takes up the entire bottom screen, so you have to use DPad and Buttons to do all the placements on the map.
If they'd've used the Right Trigger (which doesn't appear to do anything) to flip the two screens, so you can draw directly onto the map, that would've felt much more intuitive.
As it is, you have to keep switching between tapping buttons on the bottom screen to select items, then moving over to the A button to place them, and that just doesn't feel as natural as it could've. .. Shame.
