What Video Game Did I Play Yesterday?
July 2025
July 24th, 2025
Yesterday, I didn't play many games, so I get to do a lazy post today. I shut my brain off with a few rounds in Pokemon Friends.
I also played a couple of rounds of Vampire Survivors, finishing off Poe's garlic themed adventure. I am pleased to have this part of the game done!
July 23rd, 2025
I played quite a lot of games for a work day yesterday, but I'm maybe most interested in talking about a weird little "brick game" console I bought at Miniso. I had one of these off brand all-squares LCD games in junior high, so the Miniso version, though it is now being sold as cute and trendy, made me feel nostalgic. When I was a kid, I liked it because the games were abstract and didn't make a lot of sense. Last night, though, I went straight for Game I, which turned out to be a version of Tetris with an area clearing piece and garbage blocks that shift every time you get a line. It was mysterious, but a bad version of Tetris is still pretty fun in that it is Tetris. I want to pick a "goal score" in this, beat it, and then move onto another game on here.
I also tried Pokemon Friends, the new minigame/puzzle/edutainment Pokemon game that surprise-launched yesterday morning. It is definitely a game made for kids, and nothing I've done in it has been challenging. However, while playing it, I didn't think at all about dying from climate change or nuclear war, so I bought in to the full game and look forward to playing it for a zillion hours. Anything that can shut up my bad brain is magic.
I did my first daily workout in Gold's Gym Cardio Workout on Wii and really enjoyed it. It mixes mini-games in with the regular boxing, giving it a more varied feel than most of the later Fitness Boxing games.
Before bed, I finished off the day with two rounds of Vampire Survivors. I'm getting close to the end of the Garlic Paradise adventure!
July 22nd, 2025
Today has been lame. It's super hot outside, and I had and repaired some car trouble. All through work, I had a very distinct malaise that I haven't been able to shake off.
That aside, I did have some fun trying Gold's Gym Cardio Workout for Wii, which is just the first game in the Fitness Boxing series. The branding is a bit weird, but the bright, round Wii-era look to everything is very charming! I really enjoyed that.
I played Yoshi a little before bed, too. I don't really like this game, so this was a weird choice on my part. It's kind of boring for a puzzle game, and not in a way that helped me sleep, and trying to complete the eggs feels too random, too. Maybe I'm not giving it a fair shot, but I have so many games I like better to play that I'm not so worried about it.
July 21st, 2025
I have internet again tonight! It feels so fancy! It means I can finally share my crummy photo I took at a Blackpink concert on Friday! As you can see, I had the most fabulous seats a pretty small amount of money can buy!
Whenever I go to a concert lately, I get fixated on how strange it is that you can listen to someone dozens upon dozens of times and then hand over some cash to go be in the same room with them. Seeing Blackpink so tiny on stage, looking like the tiny figurines next to a train set, was even more surreal than club or theater shows, but it was a lot of fun! I feel lucky that I've been able to zip around and see so many pop concerts this summer, and have had a great time at all of them. Maybe I complain a lot, but generally, I get to do a lot of fun things!
Game-wise, though, I didn't play much yesterday. I was tired from becoming untethered from practical concepts of how much money is appropriate to spend at a Daiso and then driving four hours, so I just played two or three levels of Clutter 1000 before bed.
July 20th, 2025
I came home from my weekend out to an internet outage, but I got frozen yogurt and saw a neat moth, so it's fine.
Yesterday I did a ten minute long stretching session in Fitness Boxing: Fist of the North Star, and played a few levels of Clutter 1000 before bed.
Tonight, I don't know what I'll play, but I hope I'll be able to do a normal post tomorrow!
July 19th, 2025
I'm in a hotel room with no wifi again, because my luck just isn't amazing on that front. Last night, though, all I played was a stretching session in Fitness Boxing feat. Hatsune Miku. I had done way more walking than usual and thought a good stretch last night would make it easier to keep moving today. Either that or sleeping helped, and it doesn't really matter which.
July 18th, 2025
I'm having a small adventure this weekend, hence the early post. I did play a couple of stages of a new shmup on Switch last night, called Ad SHOOT. You fight companies that put unskippable ads in front of videos in it, and I was pretty impressed by the art and voice acting! Some of the slowdown, I'm less impressed by so far, even as someone who isn't really bothered by performance issues. I'll see how this goes in later levels, though, and I do wonder if the Steam version runs better.
July 17th, 2025
My sleep was so bad last night that I went to Wal-Mart and got some sleep aid to try tonight. I've been laying awake until 3 and waking up at 6 a lot lately, which has made my work days mega difficult. Sadly, Vampire Survivors did not help me escape that fate last night, but it was still fun! I'm still doing Quick Plays just so I don't have to think too hard about what I'm doing.
I took work off tomorrow, but probably won't play too much tonight. It's more important to get some good rest again!
July 16th, 2025
I'm late posting tonight because I don't actually want to post tonight. It's not so bad, though! I got a lot of sleep catch up last night, and I'll do well tonight, too.
Last night, I thought I'd stay up too long if I played Deathsmiles, so I played Image Striker instead. I really like this game, but the difficulty spike at stage 5 is crazy! Dodging the wall is harder than it sounds. This game also crashes every time I get a game over, which is a bit discouraging.
I played a little bit of the retro tables in Zaccaria Pinball, but only for a few rounds.
After that, I pulled out the "time to go to sleep" big guns, played three rounds of Vampire Survivors on quick play, and slept for 8 hours straight. It was great and I am absolutely starting here tonight.
July 15th, 2025
Today, I was so tired that I was nodding off at my work desk, so this won't be a very exciting post today. It's been really hard to sleep through the night the past few days! I was pretty tired last night, too, though. I played Deathsmiles for a little bit before bed, on my Switch. My longer run last night was pretty good until the last stage again, at which point I absolutely crumbled. I used a ridiculous amount of credits to beat the final boss! From here, I might need to grind out this last stage in training mode if I want my one credit clear. I'm not sure how robust those training options are, but I'll see when I'm feeling a little peppier!
July 14th, 2025
Yesterday, I kind of vegged out, so my screenshots for today's post are rubbish. I watched a documentary about pinball on Saturday, so I ended up re-downloading Zaccaria Pinball on my Legion Go. I thought that it being heftier than my Switch might make it feel better to play, but hadn't really taken into account how good the rumble would be, or that it just flat out runs smoother. Plus, it has over 4900 achievements on Steam for some God-knows-why reason, so I redownloaded the cheap retro tables and dug in. I didn't focus in on any one table yesterday, but when I get to the score challenges, I'll be a little more specific here. Video pinball is so cool!
I'm trying to play some shmups every day, just to relax and clear my brain out, so I played the PC version of Deathsmiles a little. It has enough different from the Switch version that I'll keep it on its own page. This version has achievements, and the Switch version has some mysterious extra characters, so I'll just keep a different focus for each.
I also started Rusty's Retirement yesterday, a cute bottom-of-the-screen farming game with robots, but I forgot to take a screenshot! I had it on for hours while I did chores and crafts, so I'm kind of frustrated with myself here. I's okay, though. I'll come back to this.
July 13th, 2025
I slept super poorly last night, so tonight's post will lack zest. I tried Super Dimension Fortress Macross II, an old arcade shooter yesterday, though. It is a score attack style shooter, where you need to hit a certain amount of points to go to the next level, and I really enjoyed it! It's kicking my butt so hard I can't clear the beginner set of stages on easy, but that just means I have nowhere to go but up (and, within the game, probably to the right).
I played a couple pretty good rounds of Meteora's Mystic Merge before bed, too. It's the perfect game to play and let your mind wander while wondering how long it would take your area to turn into a wasteland ruled by roving bike gangs if you've just been watching Mad Max movies.
July 12th, 2025
I'm really spacing out for it being fairly early in an uneventful day! I did go get Vietnamese food for a friend's birthday, and stopped at Dollar Tree after, but there's nothing high intensity about any of that. Oh, well! It's ok to be a little out of it on a weekend.
Last night, I played some more of Ketsui: Deathtiny, grinding away at the lowest difficulty option on the super in-depth training mode. I cleared stage one with no hits as both planes, but it took more effort than I'd care to admit for the full stage run! It was really satisfying to get there, though.
I tried Akai Katana Shin, too, and got my butt kicked hard. I am not sure what I should be doing when I swap between shooting with a plane and a magic flying person yet, and not sure if now is the time to start juggling this game. It's very cool, though! I'm sure my lack of an attention span will bring me back here sooner rather than later.
July 11th, 2025
Last night I was being a big dork and realized that I could just pick up Ketsui Deathtiny: Kizuna Jigoku Tachi as a PS4 download rather than importing a physical copy and did just that. I played the G-Mode Archives port of the flip phone version of this a lot a couple months ago, so starting it up for the first time had a strange "Wow, this is what this game is supposed to look and sound like!" feeling to it.
Gameplay-wise, though, they were a lot more comparable than I expected. I started in Super Easy mode, just out of a lack of confidence, but got my 1CC on my first try. It felt really good! One of the trophies in this game is for clearing Super Easy mode with no deaths, though, not just no continues, and I imagine the f-bomb will be dropped as often as my pilot's auto-bomb as I chase that goal.
At any rate, I like Ketsui. The music is neat and it makes me feel relaxed, so I'm looking forward to playing a ton of this.
July 10th, 2025
I am fried tonight, but I built a super cute Mega Blocks kit of Sylveon last night. I've had this for a while, since I went to Minneapolis a couple months ago, but I'm trying to finish some of the kits and crafts I already have rather than just shopping nonstop. It's pretty satisfying, not least because Legos are fun and Pokemon are cute! It's fun to show off stuff like this, too!
Last night, though, I wasn't really feeling games. I tried a little of Star Soldier on Nintendo Switch Online, and enjoyed it quite a bit once I realized that the structures on screen weren't obstacles to dodge. I couldn't get past level one last night, since I was tired and disinterested. It's easy to imagine myself playing this again, though.
I did a couple puzzles in Zodiacats to make myself fall asleep, too. I think this is a little more tedious than the other stuff I've played from Devcats, but it's a decent bedtime game. I wish the puzzle pieces in this were cut like jigsaw puzzle pieces instead of just squares, though.
July 9th, 2025
Next week, I'm going to go see Blackpink, so I got so distracted looking at merch online that I almost forgot to post here tonight. This is because I'm super classy. Last night, I was also killin' it. I wanted to play more Mushihimesama, but was too lazy to hold up my Legion Go. Instead, I played a couple rounds of Dodonpachi SaiDoiOuJou on Switch. It made me sleepy, so it was a neutral experience!
I also got back to Sephirothic Stories. I entered a new area, so I didn't have much catching up to do. Plus, this has a nice little story summary to check in on. I was a little frustrated that the new area had the same background as all the rest I've done, but oh, well! Budget games sometimes have budget features.
July 8th, 2025
I am knee deep in using jigsaw puzzles that are way too small as a stress-related shutdown mechanism, so I didn't play so many games last night. I did try Mushihimesama, though, trying to figure out what shooter I want to focus on. It was pretty good, and the bug theme gives it an interesting sort of vibe. This might be a good choice!
I played a few rounds of Meteora's Mystic Merge right before bed, too, alternating between the characters to try to get Steam achievements. I think it'll be a long road to most of them, but I'm excited to keep playing. It's very relaxing.
July 7th, 2025
My gaming focus was pretty rubbish yesterday. I spent probably a little over an hour with Walt Disney World Quest: Magical Racing Tour for the Game Boy Color, played in a very above-board fashion. I got really into it in the moment, swearing profusely when the AI opponents used the item that turned me into a frog, and beat the basic quest. There's quite a bit more to do- that was only a third of the game, and there's a full track I haven't unlocked. Thinking about it today, though, I'm not sure if I will ever play it again. It's totally fine, but I am unmotivated.
From there, I was going to make a run at clearing my last two achievements in Cat Survivors. Instead, I played one run, got really sleepy, and then went to buy a pizza.
My other gaming was right before bed. I'm having trouble making a shmup click as "what I want to play" right now, so I played Dodonpachi Saidaioujou for a little bit on novice mode. This wasn't quite it, either, but I was having fun with it. I might just be in a weird headspace right now.
I finished off the day with Super Mario Kart, which I hadn't played for ages! I'd beaten the first two 50cc cups on Nintendo Switch Online a couple years ago, so I jumped right into the third cup very poorly. I ended up doing some time trials of the two tracks that gave me trouble, and did improve my times. It's not likely those improvements will hold up once a stack of AI racers are throwing things at me again, but it did make me feel better. Plus, I like the music in the game so much! It's just fun to play, no matter how poorly I'm doing.
July 6th, 2025
I'm ending this holiday weekend with a mild headache and a renewed appreciation for kart racers, both of which could be worse. Yesterday, I really played a lot of Deathsmiles, and ended up credit scumming my way through the last couple levels in the 1.1 version as Rosa, after doing pretty well in the early game. Seeing the final stage here makes my dream of a one credit clear seem very daunting, but it'll be interesting to get there.
At one point in the day with family, I got the Switch 2 controller handed to me. One of my siblings had just speedrun Metroid: Zero Mission, so with nothing but the best games on my mind, I ended up playing a few rounds of Atlantis no Nazo. I don't have a screenshot today, since I wasn't on my own console, but it's an extremely janky Famicom platformer that I'd been fixated on in pandemic times. The jumping is bad, your little guy drops dead from anything, the level design is baffling, and it is just overall not great. I love it, and it was fun to make other people gaze upon its horrors, even if only briefly.
I also played a few rounds of Candivity to eat up some free time while stuff cooked. It was a little boring, but kept me from getting too interested in anything while waiting for timers to go off.
July 5th, 2025
I forgot about this blog in the midst of cooking for a family thing. I made green beans with smoked sausage, cinnamon apples, dill and garlic potatoes, and some rice with ground pork, veggies, and cajun seasoning. I'm pretty happy with all of it, but scrambled, too!
I'll sort this better tomorrow, but yesterday on my own, I started an ad-supported RPG, Astarune Academy, on my tablet and played a couple credits of Deathsmiles. At my sister's, I tried Mario Kart World on her Switch 2, then came home to play Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing Transformed while chugging a White Claw. It was an ok day.
July 4th, 2025
It's not very exciting, but last night, I did some character experimentation in Castle of Shikigami, still not doing terribly well. It was fun, though. I got to do some quality joystick twirling.
I played a round of Vampire Survivors to put myself to sleep, too, and it worked like a charm! It was actually really nice.
July 3rd, 2025
Last night, I tried to see how far I could get on 4 credits in Castle of Shikigami, and I did really poorly! It's almost like anxious exhaustion isn't a good state of mind for improving at a video game.
I was slightly more successful when I tried Hidden Shapes Lovely Cats, a calm, small scale cat themed puzzle game from Steam. I'm an easy mark, so I liked it, and it helped me get to sleep. It'll be nice to play more of this.
July 2nd, 2025
I am still not doing my best, and that is ok. I played another 8 or 9 rounds of Castle of Shikigami last night, and did much worse than I had the night before. A big part of that is that I'm trying to figure out when to use my ranged attacks vs my melee ones, so there is still progress being made. I'm trying to sort out how I want to chase the Steam achievements here, too. I need one clear on each difficulty as each character, but only one 1CC, or one credit clear, per difficulty overall. I'm thinking of chasing a four credit clear as each character, then deciding who to use for my 1CC attempt after that. I'm probably just overthinking things, though.
I played a round of Meteora's Mystic Merge to relax just before going to sleep, too, and it worked okay.
July 1st, 2025
I had another bad round of nervousness keeping me awake early this morning, despite nothing being wrong, but I had a blood test this morning and was able to get some information and help. I should feel better in a couple weeks! It seems like a long time from here, but I'm glad.
Last night, I was able to relax some playing Castle of Shikigami. I'm pretty bad at it, but can consistently clear the first stage within one credit. Yes, I am doing this on Very Easy mode, but progress is progress! I'm looking forward to playing more in a few minutes!
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