What Video Game Did I Play Yesterday?

Gunbird (Lenovo Legion Go)

March 6th, 2026

After work last night, I decided I wanted to finish Barbie: Ocean Explorer without accidentally triggering any major bugs. To avoid that, I just played each minigame once, not even thinking about getting 100%, and buzzed to the end in 19 minutes. It was anti-climactic, especially since a lot of the minigames are pretty tedious. There's one where you catch bubbles in rings that's so boring it would have stopped my 100% run dead if I'd gotten there without breaking things, and another where you very slowly drop cannonballs into a very slowly moving barrel that was also very dull. The background art is pretty, though, so I'm not sorry I played this. It's a chill little game with some sparkly stuff and a dolphin. I would have loved this as a kid.

After that, though, I was in shmup mode and got to doing some runs of Gunbird. The Steam port of this I've got has a hard three continue limit, which I don't mind unless it's late at night and I just got a game over one hit from killing the final boss. It's a fun challenge, though, and I ended up flitting around between characters and difficulties last night. It was a nice time.

I finally tried Earthion, too, pictured below with a very overbearing CRT filter that I was relieved I could turn off. This isn't really a style of shooter I'm used to, but it was cool enough that I'll give it more tries! It's fascinating to see what people can wring out of the Sega Genesis with a new, 2025 game, and it's handy to have it on Steam, too.

October 19th, 2025

Yesterday afternoon, I sat down for an hour or so to just play through some hidden cats games. I was in the mood for it, and would have played more than five were it not for the mess that it has made this blog for today. It was a good amount, though!

I'll start with the three that felt like the same game chopped into pieces: Hidden Cats: Spooky, Hidden Cats: Halloween, and Hidden Cats: Haunted Mansion. They all had the same color scheme and very similar, if not the same music. I also think I played them most difficult to easiest, which made the experience feel strange.. I got these so cheaply in a bundle that I'm mystified as to why these weren't just strung together into one game. Around Christmas, I'll be dipping back into this series, though, and I'm curious to see if the three winter games are the same way.

From there, I played Hidden Cosmo Cats, which isn't technically a Halloween game. It had a big monster, though, so I'm counting it. The little cats are certainly braver about this whole thing than I would be.

The last and best hidden animals game I played yesterday was Hidden Capybaras with Oranges and Pumpkins: Spooky Halloween Edition. Even though this was more of a hidden capybaras game, it did have five high quality hidden cats to find. This game looked nice, had some nice smaller sets of hidden objects to find, and wasn't too lazy about hiding the capybaras. It was solid, as far as these things go!

I also played some more normal games yesterday, because I was unproductive yesterday! I tackled another grand prix in Mario Kart World, unlocking Donkey Kong's single alternate outfit and getting Daisy unlocked as a driver. It was a satisfying play session.

I tried Gunbird, too, which was a very entertaining shooter! It's set to 3 credits by default, which I left as is. I wasn't able to get to the end that way, even on the easiest difficulty, but I'll get there eventually.

My Vampire Survivors session for the night was really excellent, too! I got three or four unlocks, which I was happy with, and finally cracked the code on how to get to level 80 on the inverse levels. It made me feel very smart and talented, when in fact, the key was just reading character skills before selecting them. A victory is a victory, though.