Belated Shameless Gaming Month 2012 Final Roundup

shameless-gaming-july-2012

So, shameless gaming month for 2012 has well and truly gone. The question for me, though, is how did I go in the end?

Overall I think I did well, and certainly a lot better than last year! I managed to complete Explodemon, platinum/100% Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection, finished Phantasy Star 2 on the Sega Ages 2500 release in Easy mode and had a crack at finishing Monster World 4 on the PS3. I ended up getting a quarter of the way through the latter before the end of the month, so unfortunately I didn’t manage to finish everything in July, but I did 100% Monster World 4 by the end of the first week in August, so I think that’s pretty good by my standards 🙂

Not sure what I’ll be working on next year, but I found this was a great excuse to funnel my time into some gaming and get me back into the groove of making time to play games, rather than just write about them 🙂

Shameless Gaming Month, July 2012 – update 2

shameless-gaming-july-2012

So, time for another update!

I haven’t spent much time hammering away at Monster World 4 or the Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection – I have been sinking all my gaming time into Phantasy Star 2 though, and it is proving to be an unbelievable experience going back and playing this amazing, seminal JRPG from my childhood. For those who have played through the game, I’ve just finished the dungeons on Dezo and am about to pick up the Neisword to grind my party levels up a bit on Noah, then it’ll be time to take a crack at the double-whammy of end game bosses. I reckon I’ll be able to tidy it up this week, which then leaves a couple of weeks to get stuck into the other titles I’ve picked out for this month.

I’ve actually been documenting my playthrough of Phantasy Star 2 in photos as I’ve played through important plot points or found other bit of trivia, including some hand-written notes by my brother and I had written in the official Phantasy Star 2 hint book that came with our original copy of the game on the SMD back in 1993. I have some ideas on a piece I want to write on the experience for the blog, so be prepared for a lengthy post about reliving one of the pivotal points in my gaming history. I promise it will include hyperbolic overtones (like “pivotal”, “juxtaposition” and “ahead of its time”), because any regular reader of Retro Otaku has probably got the hint that I am prone to suffering the occasional moment of hyperbolic-induced hysteria over something trivial 🙂