N64 Cartridges: What Are You?

Almost everyone stores their N64 Cartridges the same way... front to back. Not open-faced like some deconstructed sandwich on Cutthroat Kitchen. It's just not practical - they are designed to be stored like this:

Like this!

You can't store them like this! Who has that much floor space?!

But after storing them front to back what is what? What game are you cartridge 6th from the left. I have no idea - the cartridge probably doesn't even know what game it is because it's so disorganized. The front of the cartridge lets everyone know who you are, but you are hidden behind other confused cartridges.

So now if I want to find Quest 64 and fondly remember the terrible nostalgia of grinding enemies and hitting them with my little oaken staff I have to look through each and every cartridge until I find it! WHAT?! Nintendo, Nintendo, what were you thinking? There's perfect real estate on top of the cartridge for a label!

The solution is to make our own - or for those who are lazy and want something probably waaaay nicer than any home made sort of label you could just pick up some of these:

Oh thank goodness!

Sweet mother of cartridge identification! It works perfect and looks great to boot! These stickers are the must-have solution. The pack comes with the entire North American N64 game collection. I picked some up a few weeks ago and they were easy to stick on and look fantastic. You can pick them up from this Etsy shop - AfterMidnightps!

Aww yeah, that's the stuff!

For us Canadians it's a little pricey with our flailing dollar, but I bit the Bullet Bill and ordered it. Totally worth it in my opinion!

This Little King's Story Has Come to an End

It's been a great number of years since I first turned a page on Little King's Story. I Originally mentioned the cute, pikmin-esque game all the way back in 2009! Well I finally managed to beat and close the book on this game.

You start as a king in a lowly kingdom with only a few followers, but as you grow and build and conquer your kingdom gets bigger and more glorious! There are only a few townsfolk at first, but over the course of the game you'll gather well over 100, and each of them has their own unique name and can fall in love with other townsfolk. You send them into various structures you build to give them different jobs such as soldier, ranger, chef, merchant, carpenter, and so on. Some of these jobs let your townsfolk build certain things as you explore the map with them, or fight enemies, or unlock areas of the map.

Look at all those loyal followers!

There are a number of quirky enemies and some intimidating ones like dragons and giant mushrooms. Some can be killed by certain jobs faster (chickens are cooked quickly with a chef), while some enemies simply need to be beaten to pulp! The majority of the enemies are some sort of little Onii goblin demon creature thing. As you defeat enemies they'll drop loot which you can take back to your castle, cash in, and the afford to build new things in your kingdom.

The inconspicuous Onii

Watch out for those giant mushrooms! They're more terrifying than they sound!

The map is made up of a variety of neighboring kingdoms and areas. As you explore new areas and eventually encounter some crazy other kings you'll have to fight and defeat them to unite the entire map under your rule. Each king is very unique and the boss fights against them are very different and original. As you take more territory under your control you also start to experience earthquakes in the kingdom - a mysterious outside force seems to be at hand.

All the Kingdom's are ripe for the conquering! ...er, I mean, Unifying!

The storyline is fairly simple, but lighthearted. Unite the kingdoms, save the princesses, spread your glory, and investigate the nature of a devastating outside force. The king's advisers and other unique characters in the kingdom add to storytelling and some funny cut scenes and situations.

Little King's Story did have a bit of frustrating elements. Sometimes the enemies and bosses are incredibly forgiving - instant kill knockouts that kill half or nearly all of your men left me in disbelief more than a few times. Mouth agape, I simply had to make sure I never let that happen again. Targeting enemies can be painful at times especially if they're close together or near other target-able things. Lastly, making sure all your followers stay together can be a pain at times, especially through narrow areas, and sometimes people fall way behind or are lost - though using the "evade" maneuver does relieve this a little bit.

Little King's Story was a joy to play despite it's few frustrations, but this little king would recommend it to anyone who enjoyed Pikmin or other games featuring unit management, exploration, and whimsy. It's time to move onto other video game pastures - next up, I think I'll take a crack at completing my Xenoblade Chronicles playthrough. :)

Halloween Good Times

This is a little overdue, but me and my girlfriend celebrated our first Halloween in our new house! It was exciting and fun and hectic, but also a letdown on the trick or treaters front!

We bought our first Halloween decorations together which included an inflatable pumpkin, and my parents found us an inflatable vampire minion! It was a hit with a lot of the kids (I could hear them outside... Not creepy at all!).

Isn't he frightfully adorable!

 Pumpkins were carved - right down to the last minute! A bit of mad scramble to get them done, but totally worth it. We carved a Minion, Rainbow Dash, Boo, and Patrick pumpkin!

We watched the traditional Nightmare before Christmas movie along with The Great Pumpkin, and Hocus Pocus. After the trick or treaters died down we went over to some friends and watched Paranorman while eating tons of sugary sweet things.

There were not that many trick or treaters in the complex, and unfortunately, not as many people handing out candy this year as there was the previous year. That all adds up to a pretty quiet neighborhood. Everytime there was a trick or treater we would scramble to the door - we weren't always ready - they were few and far between. We saw a Slenderman costume and an awesome Pinata costume though!

All in all it was an excellent Halloween! Now we just have to om nom nom all this leftover candy!

New Home!

Me and my girlfriend recently moved into our new house! We moved in on the 28th of September and it's been a bit of a hectic month. It's a big wonderful life step and we couldn't be happier!

There's so much that goes into a house that it took a while to get set up. Heat, electricity, internet, food, furnishings, clothing, electronics, and all manner of books and games. There's also setting up all your mailing addresses and changing your information on driver's licences and other id's. It's a busy time!

You also get a sense of just how much "stuff" you own - for better or worse. Thank goodness we had help loading and unloading it all. My girlfriend's computer desk just about killed 4 people trying to get it into the house. It's a beast! We even emptied that sucker and took all the drawers out... it's just a grade A solid beast of a desk. The sectional was a pain too... I'll never forget getting it stuck practically jammed in the doorway while desperately trying to hold it up while standing in a bush on the other side of a railing. Heh.

Pivot ended up being another word for "crush fingers."

My girlfriend and I have also been reducing the "things" we own and trying to just chuck things we don't need. It's amazing the junk you find when go through all your belongings - there are some treasures in there too! I found awesome/weird stickers and I have no idea what they are from or how I got them. They are disturbing and hilarious. 0_0

heh heh heh.

Another thing I learned from packing and unpacking is that there is a ton of cardboard involved. I literally filled an entire dumpster (one of those large recycling ones found outside most businesses) with cardboard. It's not just the boxes from all the stuff we packed up, but all the cardboard from the new things we bought for the house too. A few appliances, chairs, a table, a tv - we were the cardboard king and queen (not a title I'm eager to hold on to). The one benefit of the wide variety of cardboard was that I was able to make some handy cardboard storage slides for all of our games and a container for controllers etc.

Wooo! Awesome, easy storage!

While going through things and deciding what to keep or chuck it should be noted that I get very nostalgic. Almost every item has some history or story or memory attached to it - and sometimes it's time to just let it go. Nostalgia has been working in hyper-drive lately, but I've still managed to part with a fair chunk of things. It's worth it for marginally less clutter and storage around the house.

There's still some things to do in the house, replace the hot water tank, install garage shelving, and buy a basement storage unit, but it definitely feels more and more like home everyday!