-- 2023 Summary --

Once again, it's New Year's Eve in my time zone, and I like the idea of going over my gaming thoughts each year on Backloggery. So I'm going to do so!

Before anything else, uhhh for some reason last year I said I wanted to play more games from the Dark Souls series. I played a bit further into DS1 and didn't really like it that much :P

Anyhow! 2023 was full of trying out new games and series, many of which I fell in love with. Now I'm going to list some!

Jazz Jackrabbit! Technically I tried the first game back in December of last year, but finished both games in 2023. What cool games!! They're so full of attitude and it's just fun to blast everything with guns, and the soundtracks (particularly JJ2's) are pure 90's awesomeness.

Battletoads! I've wanted to tackle this series for a long time, and now I've beaten the majority of the games! (Still have the Game Boy and 2020 games left.) For some, the difficulty is a huge turnoff, but for me it was a total blast. The arcade game in particular just may be my new favorite beat-em-up!

Little Tail Bronx! One day in August I was bored and felt like playing a game with furries, and learned of Tail Concerto. It's a nice li'l game! Solatorobo: Red the Hunter, the sequel, was when I fell in *love* with the world of Little Tail Bronx. Currently I'm in the middle of playing Fuga: Melodies of Steel, and it's a great strategy RPG!

I also played through Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom (the most charming NES game ever) and am in the process of playing through the Panzer Dragoon series (Saga is a fascinating RPG so far!), but I don't have enough character space to keep ramblin'. Let's move onto my favorite game of the year!

According to my Memory Card, I played about four games that came out this year. Honestly, it's not even close: Pizza Tower is my favorite game of 2023. As a Wario Land fan, it's the best successor I could've ever dreamed of: tight controls, creative levels, thrilling challenge, silly art, excellent music...it's the epitome of a fun game, and one of the best platformers I've ever played. Maybe THE best, who knows.

And that wraps things up! This was a fun year for games, definitely. 2024, I hope to give more RPGs a shot, discover new games to be loved, make better progress on Picross (this year was sorta dry in that regard), maybe finally play some more Final Fantasy XIV, perhaps experience some of SEGA's neglected franchises, and lastly...continue enjoying video games!

The only thing I don't like about PMD is that you can't be any Pokémon you want.

And yes, you're responsible, I also like your Volbeat and Illumise Lake banner, peak of PMD saga

I like your PMD pfp, I'm gonna use the Dunsparce one

-- 2022 Summary --

It's New Year's Eve in my time zone now, and because I'm too impatient to wait until 2022 ends proper (and because I have a flight to catch the next day), I'm gonna type about gaming experiences this year! Also today is the day I officially reach adulthood, but who cares 'cause we've got video games to talk!

First and foremost, RPGs. 2021 marked the year I gave series such as Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts an honest to goodness shot, aaand then got lazy in the middle of playing Chrono Trigger. This year, I not only finally beat Chrono Trigger, but finished Final Fantasy VII, IX, and X, and have played every mainline entry in the series up to XII. Safe to say I'm quite a fan of the series now, and Final Fantasy IX in particular has become one of my favorite games of all time.

Platformers received some healthy attention from yours truly this year. I finally finished Ori and the Blind Forest, an overall solid game, as well as Klonoa 2: Lunatea's Veil, which didn't leave the same narrative impact on me compared to its predecessor but made up with some of the finest puzzle-platformer level design I've ever seen.

Among all video games, or media as a whole for that matter, none shine quite as brightly as Picross. Yup, I started going through the Picross e series. Now why would I do such a thing, when I still have Picross 2 to go through as well as Picross DS? ...Eh I dunno, they're convenient to play outside of the house.

There's some other random games I'd make note of (like how I finally beat Shiren the Wanderer this year!), but now I wanna get into the matter of my favorite game of 2022...and this is a little weird. Frankly, I don't think I played very many new games this year! I enjoyed all the ones I did greatly, but the winner of the year feels more like a victory by technicality than anything. But anyhow...it's Kirby and the Forgotten Land. I didn't think Kirby Super Star would ever be topped as my favorite entry in the series, but the sheer quality, polish, and creativity of Forgotten Land is truly incredible. Oh, and if I were to choose my favorite game of 2022 regardless of when it came out? Probably Final Fantasy IX.

And with that, that's all I could think to cram into this rather long-winded Backloggery post. 2023, I hope to play even more RPGs and platformers, give the Dark Souls series a shot, await the hugely anticipated release that is Tears of the Kingdom, work on the Picross grind, and finally: enjoy more video games!

I think now that I finally decided to start playing some GBA games, I'm going to start with Red Rescue Team just so I can play the series chronologically. I think regardless of what game I choose first I'm going to like them because it's pokemon talking and that's cute as it is. I liked PokePark and that game was just doing minigames over and over, definitely going to enjoy a fighting game with some nice story mixed in

I'll actually take you up on that offer, I've wanted to try out the Mystery Dungeon series for a while now but didn't know which game to start with. I think the most easily available for me is Super Mystery Dungeon on the 3DS eShop which I'm going to buy maybe today even! I hope there's no overarching plot that requires me to play the previous ones

Thanks for the add!
I saw that you had added a bunch of picross games and I felt compelled to add you, also I dig the page layout so that's that too

Regarding Picross, I've completed e1-e7 and the 3 non-JP exclusive brand/licensed (whatever you wanna call them) games. The ones that have to do with games and franchises are obviously far better than the normal e ones, more personality and just more fun to play in a sense, not that the e games are bad but they're just.. that, which isn't a bad thing! I've yet to finish e8 because I got a little bored of playing the same game over and over so I'm leaving that for a later date. I also want to play the JP ones but that's for when I figure out how to work the homebrew to translate them.

Your game gallery is so my taste, at least for the consoles that I care about You've played like all the games that I've played/want to play and that's very neat.

Now that I think about it, I've never been in contact with someone who plays Toontown Rewritten, but unlike you I've been very on and off but mostly off with the game. I play it like once a blue moon, it's just too grindy for my taste and I'm not in the mood for that. I usually log in to go to a jellybean fest so I can purchase clothes lol. The only "impressive" thing I've got to show is that I signed up back in 2013-2014 and got one of those exclusive retired outfits, so I guess that's that :P

your page is so teal and good whoa

I'm gonna send a message to my own Backloggery page to remind myself to update my games more often this year. Yes, that sounds like a great idea! Also oh my goodness these emotes