What Video Game Did I Play Yesterday?

Heiwa Parlor Pro: Dolphin Ring Special (Anbernic)

December 29th, 2025

I really enjoyed my time with Bibi Blocksberg: Big Broom Race 3 earlier in the year, so I picked up the new sequel, Bibi Blocksberg: Big Broom Race 4. Bafflingly, it is exactly the same game as the last one, but with two key differences. First, the witches are no longer cel shaded. Second, it barely runs. It's so bad that in one race, I saw an opponent disappearing and reappearing further forward, like the game can't properly handle rendering the other racers. I have no clue why a company would release the same game, down to the tracks and cutscenes being the same, but way worse, but it is super interesting! I am going to get every achievement in this.

I got Heiwa Parlor Pro: Dolphin Ring Special to start throwing me some jackpots, too, all of which seem to be accompanied by the same animation of a little pig vibing with a mermaid, surfing, and nearly being eaten by a shark, though not in that order. This is really serving me well as a silly idle game.

Most of my game time, though, was dedicated to Luck Be A Landlord. I beat a few floors and have started fighting the landlord directly, which is a great time. I am going to have to finish this off before I'll be able to focus on anything else.

December 28th, 2025

Tonight, I got my PS3 set back up in my living room. It hasn't been out there since I finished off Sonic the Fighters, so it's nice to have it back. I am not sure if I'll do much with it tonight, but it should pop up in a post within the next few days.

Last night, I fell deep into the roguelike pit, which is fine. I started with Cat God Ranch, playing a few rounds after grabbing some screenshots of the cats.

From there, though, I went back to Luck Be A Landlord, which I hadn't played for a while! It's really fun, and I became set on finally finishing this. I hadn't played any stages with the essences yet, which are temporary items that can give you permanent boosts, and those lead to some really crazy amounts of coins per spin late in the game. I'll need to get this out of my system before going back to Cat God Ranch.

I also kept up with Heiwa Parlor Pro: Dolphin Ring Special, finally getting the game to spit out some goofy animations at me. I didn't get any jackpots at all, but chalked up my disappointment to not really knowing what goes on in pachinko and pressed forward. I'm not playing with real cash, so I could care less.

December 27th, 2025

For 2026, I think I'm going to focus on PS1/N64/Saturn era games, so I did a page skin for PS1 games on here last night. I still need to do N64, but I was surprised how similar the logo colors were when I looked at them side by side! Instead, I might turn towards the jungle green or atomic purple color schemes. The translucent controllers were so neat!

Anyway, yesterday I continued my PS1 pachinko journey with Heiwa Parlor Pro: Dolphin Ring Special. These games, or the ones I've played so far, have a little screen for "richi data," which kind of catalogs how often you trigger special animations you can get in the slots section of the playfield, with info on if you won or lost upon getting them. Filling these up gives me something of a way to measure clearing the game, so I'm going to go for it and focus on this one first! I like the cute, beachy theme and bright colors, which is as good of a reason to mess with such a low maintenance game as any.

Before bed, I played a bit of Cat God Ranch, too, getting a decent grip on the game's systems. I'm keeping my farm in this by feeding loads of birds to foxes, but life is brutal.