Munchmadnesskin

In my last post, I mentioned that I was able to play Munchkin for the first time.  I was intimidated at first.  Partly because I'd heard of the game, but knew nothing about it and was playing with people who were familiar with the game and its mechanics.  How familiar?  I didn't ask, but they seemed to know a lot more than me, which during a card game, can be quite a lot, especially when there is more than a single rule.

It's like going to play Killer Instinct or Street Fighter IV with someone and you've never played that game before.  All of a sudden, you're up against someone who knows a handful of specific moves or how to properly execute a Combo Breaker.  It was a little frustrating in that, like in any card game, I didn't want to reveal what cards I had in my hand, but at the same time, understand when I could play a card.  Specifically a monster card.  Not a "Wandering Monster" card, just a regular monster card.  A monster card that happened to be a Level 16 Undead King Tut.

Don't get me wrong, the rules were explained and understood as best they could, considering we were all a smidgen tired, having driven 101 miles to just outside of Astoria, then an additional 15 miles (which took about an hour) to get to a Safeway and back for all the camping things we forgot to bring; like firewood for one.  And we had been drinking steadily for just over an hour and I had broken out a bottle of Fireball to share/introduce.  So really, the non-comprehension was mostly all on me, so I'll take the blame on that one.

In the end though, I really like the game that Steve Jackson has created.  So much so that only after 1 1/2 times playing Munchkin, I have bought the basic deck and three expansion decks.  Specifically, these ones:

I also plan on purchasing this expansion deck once it becomes available.  Another nice thing about the expansion decks, is that each card, from each expansion has their own tiny logo on the front of the card that tells you it's from an expansion deck.  In case you want to play with the standard deck and not The Guild or Monster Enhancers deck, you can easily find them within the massive stack.  It's a great, simple little idea.  Oh, oh, oh!  And the expansion decks are all relatively inexpensive at only ~$5, or there abouts, depending on the deck.

One of the things that drew me to this game (or really, buying the game), was that upon further examination, all of the decks are the same.  You could go out and buy five copies of the Munchkinomicon and all 15 cards in the pack are all the same 15 cards.  There are no "rare" cards.  Sure, you can buy the Boxes of Holding which come with two additional cards that you can't acquire on their own, but they're not going to be the rare cards like in Magic: The Gathering that are "so rare" that they'll fetch hundreds of dollars.  Sorry, correction, thousands of dollars.  You can also purchase blank cards to come up with your own rules of sorts that will blend in with the rest of your deck.  And everyone plays with the agreed upon deck.  If you introduce a card that no ones seen before, it goes in the deck with all the other cards.

Something that I find interesting, is that I went into this post intending to talk about my most recent trip to a new gaming store to buy some d10 dice for some rounds of Munchkin that Conklederp, Coolman and I played last night, but that somehow turned into this conker of a post.  On Monday I'll go into my gaming store non-adventure.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

The Brain Has It's Own Plans

Brief apology

Hey there reader,  I just wanted to address my month-long silence on this blog.  At the end of August, I moved into a new place in Sacramento, and I'm still recovering.  I've also got issues about time-management and stuff like that.

But I think I've gotten to a point where I'm again ready to start posting.  So, I'm sorry for the absence,  I will be more present from here on out.  

-Dr. Potts

Video game visual art

I come back to this image a lot.  I like it so much.  I don't own The Secret of Mana, and I don't necessarily have enough time to play it all the way through.  And also, I don't have a partner to play it with, which is important.  But I do have the soundtrack!  And I do have this image.  

Viewing this image gives me something akin to playing the game.  The cartoon characters against a backdrop of lush beauty seems to convey to me the meaning of this game.  As if the 30 hours of gameplay can be compressed into a single image.  

I decide to look up the author of this image.  His name is Hiroo Isono, and he has bunches of very similar work.  In fact, the above image is essentially one of his regularly produced images that features the Secret of Mana characters.  I really like his stuff!

Now, we in America weren't lucky enough to get Seiken Densetsu 3, which would have been Secret of Mana 2.  However, I see that Hiroo Isono's was also hired to do the art in that game, and also Seiken Densetsu 4.  This makes me glad, because I really do love his style.  Check him out, there are some good galleries online.  

NES Adventure Series: Ole's Assault IX by X-Dog

So here's the story behind the reason why there was no blog post on Monday September 17th.  

Dr. Potts, Conklederp, and others (Vorlynx, Siddmesh, Coolman and one other of whom I don't know/have a handle for) went to outside Astoria for an adventure run.  Video games were not involved in anyway but like the logo on the NES box says, it was an "Adventure."  We didn't though have to use a rope swing over any bodies of water.  For those, we either just waded or were forced to jump over.

So this was my first "adventure run" and from what I heard that weekend, it was a much smaller group than some of the larger adventure/obstacle course runs; a la Tough Mudder, Spartan Race and Warrior Dash.  There were only ~300 participants and we all started at the same time, something different than other races apparently where groups of 250 start every 30 minutes for a couple of hours.  It was a nice group; both our group and the entire group of people running, as well as the organizers.

So the course.  The course started out with a mile and-a-half run up a road, then a logging road that went "up" a hill.  We then turned off the road and into the woods/forest/wild.  The majority of the obstacles were naturally occurring, as in climbing over/under felled logs/trees, jumping over streams/creeks, climbing up hillsides and wading through mud pools.  There were some man made obstacles such as a cargo net, log walls, a barbed wire net and a log tunnel.  I was half expecting something to do with fire, but by the end, I wouldn't've been able to jump over a matchbox wall.  I should also mention that I was also wearing a Nalgene pack with close to three liters of homemade Gatorade, a couple of Cliff Bars, a package of FRS energy chews and a mini Leatherman.  The total distance for the run came out to a little over seven miles, which is three and-a-half miles farther than Conklederp and I have run in the past or any reason.

Anyway, I'll sum up the whole experience by saying that it was quite amazing and something that I would very much like to do again.  Our team (The Night's Watch) didn't come in last (partly because two teams got lost/turned around), but I think we had the most fun out of all the groups there.

On an actual gaming side for this post, I was introduced to the card game Munchkin.  It was a little confusing at first, which was partly due to the fact that I was becoming more-and-more intoxicated as the game progressed.  We did manage to get through an entire game though after returning back to the Portland area.

So in the end, why was I unable to put up a post on Monday the 17th?  Because I was tired/sore had a shit-ton of laundry/cleaning to do with all the mud that we adopted the previous day.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Apparently You Don't Need to Sign Any Forms.

Any Photoshopping Skills are Due to the Fact that I Don't Own Photoshop.

Humble Indie Bundle part VI (III in the US?)

First off, appologies for not posting anything on Monday the 17th.  Conklederp, Dr. Potts and some other friends were away during the weekend, I needed time to recover and I didn't have anything set up to post on Monday after we got back.  I will be covering that all in my next post on Monday.  

But this post is about:

That's right, there's another Humble Indie Bundle out there.  This one was released about two and-a-half days ago and the sale ends in 11 days, or on October 2nd, 2012 at 4pm PST.  When I first looked at the page (post receiving the email that announced it's birth), there were over 120,000 purchases.  Currently there are 193,590 purchases of six games and five soundtracks.  The set up for this bundle is pretty much identical to the previous bundle and my post today will be very similar except that the games that I still don't know much of anything about, will be different than the previous games that I didn't really know anything about.  So there's that.  Except that I have heard of Torchlight, but I don't know anything about the game except that it exists.  Does this lack of information make me a bad gamer?  Nope!  It just makes me an uninformed one, but I'll be less of one by the end of this post.

So onto the games!

You know what, I just recommend going to the Bundle website and checking out the compilation trailer that they've set up for people like me to watch who don't know anything about any of the games.  And really, that's one of the things that I love about the HIB's (is that a thing?), that I've never heard of many of the games, and probably wouldn't've (that is a thing, J.K. Rowling does it) heard of these games if they weren't part of the HIB (it's now a thing).

But, before I leave, I feel like I need to have the obligatory "make you feel guilty for only wanting to pay $1 for five games and five soundtracks."

Rochard w/ Soundtrack:    $14.99

Shatter w/ Soundtrack:      $11.49

S.P.A.Z.:                                $09.99

Torchlight:                           $14.99

Vessel:                                   $14.99

Dustforce w/ Soundtrack:  $12.99

And you can't even buy the S.P.A.Z. or Torchlight soundtracks on their own, so let's call those ones "rare" and maybe put them at $8-10 a piece (which is a steal for video game soundtracks, which I've spent upwards of $30 in the past for a 3 CD set).

Total Cost:  ~$95.44

Anyway, the point being, don't be a douche (used or otherwise) and pay more than $1 for these games, if you're into that sort of thing anyway.  And if you want Dustforce with it's soundtrack, you'll have to fork out a whopping $5.80.  And keep in mind that you can decide how much of your purchase price goes to the people at Humblebundle, the game developers and the Child's Play Charity.  That's all on you.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

The Bells Are Getting Louder

P.S.  And if past experiences hold true for this HIB as well, there might be an extra game tagged on sometime after the first week.  And even if you already bought the Bundle, you'll still get the extra download code.  So the only other reason to wait is because payday is on Monday and you want to feel less guilty about buying five more video games.

FPS: First Person Sickness

The content of the following post may change the way that some people see me.  Some people might feel that what I'm about to reveal/confess will not only make me less of a person, but less of a "gamer" as well.  To that, I rebuttal with: "Piss off."  Just do a Google search and you'll come back with over 100,000 results for motion sickness and video games.  It's not an isolated thing.  It's pretty common.  And that's what I'm here today to talk to y'all about.  Yes, I just typed "y'all."

But first off, I wanted to mention that I used to get car/motion sickness a bit growing up.  Up until sometime in Jr. high or late elementary I would have to either be sleeping or watching out one of the windows so as to not feel ill on car trips.  So, the happenings of motion sickness aren't entirely foreign to me.

So I just finished playing about an hour worth of Legendary (as of the writing of this, which I did a couple of days ago) and I had to stop as I started feeling the onset of motion sickness.  This is not the first time this has happened.  The very first time I felt motion sickness from playing a video game was back in 2006 when I was playing Time Splitters: Future Perfect.  When it happened, I recognized the feeling but at first couldn't figure out why it was happening.  I'd played other FPS' before (Goldeneye 007, Time Splitters 2, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter) and had never felt sick before, so I just chalked it up to just feeling sick for no good reason.  After the second time it happened, probably the following day, I realized that it was due to motion sickness caused by the game.  Did that stop me?  Uh-hell no!  I played a bit until I felt the first tinges of sickness, then stopped for a while, eventually going back to the game sometime after I felt significantly better.  Eventually the feelings of being sick stopped entirely and I was able to play all night/day/night/sleep/day etc.

I guess I felt that I had since become immune to FPS induced motion sickness as I hadn't thought about it again until earlier this year when the feelings of being ill came back.  Later in 2006, I purchased Time Splitters for the PS2 and was perfectly fine with that game.  When I played Doom 3 in 2010 in a darkened room with headphones, I felt perfectly fine; although maybe that had something to do with some sensory deprivation, or I'm just making shit up.  Then late last year/early this year when I started playing a lot of PC FPS' (Portal, Portal 2, Bioshock, Doom, Dear Esther), I felt perfectly fine.  

Then, a month or two ago, I started feeling ill after maybe 30 minutes of game playing.  This wasn't from some current AAA title either.  This was from Doom II: Hell on Earth.  By the end of the first level, I was starting to feel like I was going to be ill.  I've played Doom II now for only 58 minutes because I was feel like crap every time I play it.  I felt a little bit ill after playing Team Fortress 2, so I don't know what that's about.  maybe it's my eyes being too used to moving around and I'm just sitting still.  I've also played Slender for about half-an-hour and felt fine afterwards.  A little jittery about what was in any shadows, but physically alright.  And now, motion sickness again from Legendary.

A lot of the posts I've read about how to curb/cure this is to play often to adjust your eyes/brain to what's going on and that it's normal.  Another one is to move farther back from the screen, which I don't think is my problem as I currently have my laptop connected to our TV, which is about seven feet away from me.  I personally think that I might be able to lessen the effects by just playing an FPS frequently enough, but if it doesn't seem to stop, then I may just have to stop playing that particular game.

My name is Jack, and I sometimes get motion sickness from first person shooters.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Now That That's Over, Time For French Fries!


Update: It is two hours after completing this post and I feel fine now, with no sign of nausea.  All I did was eat some baked french fries, drank a bottle of Ninkasi Total Domination IPA and finished watching Wrath of the Titans.  It wasn't a very good movie, although I liked Toby Kebbell (the guy who played Posiden's son).  I'd totally watch The Adventures of Agenor.  Let's get on that Warner Bros.

First Impressions: Theatrhythm Final Fantasy (3DS)

I recently bought this game courtesy of a gift card from doing online surveys and Gamestop deciding to take $10 off of a lot of their Square Enix games.  I didn't look too much into it, but it might have something to do with it being the 25th anniversary of the first Final Fantasy game.  Yes, we all know that each game is not the "final" game, it's just a title that was chosen for the first game and upon it's success, ran with it.  Anyway!

In short, TFF is a rhythm game using the music from Final Fantasy through Final Fantasy XIII.  This does not include however any of the games in the Tactics, Crystals or sequel (FF X-2 or FF XIII-2) series.  The headline to the Penny-Arcade Report article pretty much sums up the game in that it's a "love letter to the fans of Final Fantasy music..."

That's me.  I love (most of) the music in the Final Fantasy series.  I previously stated that it was the music in the first Final Fantasy game that got me into video game music and series composer Nobuo Uematsu was the first game composer whose name I learned and recognized.  Of the first four video game music related CD's I owned, three were Final Fantasy related (Kefka's Domain: The Complete Soundtrack to Final Fantasy III, Symphonic Suite - Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy Celtic Moon.  The forth CD was DK Jamz: Donkey Kong Country Soundtrack).  You could probably put me in the "fanboy" category, or at least you "could have."  I never played VIII, X, X-2, XI, XIII or XIII-2 although I do have a "best of" compilation for FF X.  

Onto the game.  The concept is pretty simple.  You tap, slide or hold notes/triggers as they come by on the screen in one of four different modes.  All the while, there's stuff going on in the background that I'm only able to view in my periphery as I'm trying to focus on what trigger I have to do along with which one is coming up right behind it.  In two of the modes, the text from the prologue and epilogue scroll by in the background, but there's a giant crystal inhabiting the middle of the screen and notes flying all over the place so I can't really focus on what the game wants me to read.  It's similar with the other three modes where I want to watch what's going on in the background, but the mechanics of the game keep getting in the way.  You can however, unlock the movies for each of the games by completing certain aspects of the game and watch them without triggers getting in the way.

One thing in the game that I thought was a bit random and felt kind of "off."  After the end of each stage, you're awarded points called "Rhythmia" and these go into your overall total for the entire game.  The number of Rhythmia you earn are based on your performance of the stage, if you're using the character that's a part of the game that the song is taken from (ex: using Cecil for "Theme of Love" from Final Fantasy IV), things like that.  Then, there's one where you're awarded 10 Rhythmia for have "All Males."  !?!?!  Now you have four members in your party when you chose a song and when you start the game, you only have two females, unless Shantotto from Final Fantasy XI is a female, in which case you then have only three women.  Not enough to possibly receive an "All Females" bonus.  Now I know that you can unlock characters and I know that Rydia from FF IV is one of them (although I don't know how many unlockable characters and who they are and I'd like to figure that out for myself) so if Shantotto's a female, then you have to wait until another female is unlocked before said hypothetical bonus is acquired.  So you're getting bonus points for segregating your party.  Not cool.

Another thing I'm kind of iffy about is that you're able to equip party members with abilities and spells.  It almost seems unnecessary for a rhythm game, but it's easily forgivable considering that it's Final Fantasy.  I don't know what's going on that the characters are doing half the time, as long as I don't die and am able to complete the stage.

And I guess I should say something about the 3D effect considering that it's on the 3DS.  At the moment, I'm not overly impressed.  I mean the graphics are damn pretty (especially the FMV's from the later PS2 and PS3 Final Fantasy games), but I don't feel anything is lost when I switch back to 2D, which I haven't really done much because I mean, I might as well use the 3D effect if I have the option.

But don't get me wrong though, I've had the game for maybe two days and I've managed to put in 5 1/2 hours while I'm not either sleeping or at work.  I take that to mean that I like it.  I like it a lot.  It's a rhythm game saturating in pure nostalgia, which is the reason that I purchased said game.  If you're not a fan of rhythm games, it may not be for you.  God knows I'll play Rock Band or Donkey Konga if someone has it out, but I've never made an effort to go out and buy a set.  But, if you're not a fan of the Final Fantasy series and/or their music, you probably won't want to buy/play the game.  On the other hand, the game would be a great way to introduce someone to the existence of Final Fantasy who has not had previous experience.  Your choice really.

I know there's a lot that I haven't covered here, but that's because it's just a first impression and not an entire review.  The entire review will happen when I feel like I've completed enough of the game for me to feel like I've seen everything.  And if this follows the plan as previous Final Fantasy games, it'll take me another 120 hours to figure it all out.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

From Here, It All Goes Down.

First Impressions: BIT.TRIP RUNNER, Super Meat Boy, Team Fortress 2 & Penny Arcade's On The Rain Slick Precipice of Darkness 3

Now there's a mouthful.

I've been playing a lot of games recently since I picked up a controller for PC gaming.  Oddly enough it's an Xbox 360 controller.  Odd because it's me and I don't particularly like Xbox (I personally see it as the Sega of the Console Wars Era), but their naturally USB controller and it's a Microsoft product running on a Microsoft operating system, so I thought, why not.  Anyway, onto the games.

I remember first hearing about this game from Dr. Potts when he did one of those "30 Days of Gaming" posts on facebook, of which I did one as well.  Then I saw it in one of the Humble Indie Bundles, again which Dr. Potts got for me, which I previously mentioned was how/why I got a Steam account.  Anyway, my thoughts on BIT.TRIP RUNNER.  I really like it!

I can't state that enough.  It's an amazing combination of side scrolling, rail-platformer, rhythmesque-type game.  Basically you play as Commander Video who hearkens back to a style reminiscent of Atari 2600 characters.  You run, jump, spring board, slide and kick to the sounds of 16-bit-ish style music that progresses and develops as the level progresses and as you collect speed boosts.  It's a really fun and incredibly frustrating game.  In one sitting, it took me an hour to complete a level, albeit the longest level in the game.  Then, when I showed Conklederp how hard the level was, I beat it in less than 10 minutes.  There's just something about how the music develops over the course of a level that is a real incentive to not "die" and be thrown back to the beginning of the level.  Anyway, ti's awesome.

Currrent Time Invested:  5 Hours

Super Meat Boy is another game that I received from Dr. Potts in the Humble Indie Bundle.  Again, SMB is a platformer with a penchant for completing levels as quickly as possible.  There's even a timer that counts to a hundredth-of-a-second.  That's how frantic/fast this game can be.

For the most part, I thought I was doing alright, until I watched one of the trailers and that got me a little discouraged.  I don't think I'm that "agile" and "quick" for this type of a platformer, but that's not going to keep me from playing a couple of levels every so often.  So, due to my lack to pretty-word-forming, I just recommend watching one of the teaser trailers which gives a great example of how the game plays.

In game, I've made it through only 19 seconds of this trailer.  And the first 4 seconds aren't even game play.

I do really like that whenever you pass a level, the game shows you a compilation of all your failed attempts to pass that level along with your successful attempt, all stacked up on each other.  Depending on the difficulty of the level, it could end up looking like a mass suicide cult on acid.  To sum up:  this is a really fun/infuriating game, although I don't know if I'll be "able" to finish (not "complete") it.

Current Time Invested:  70 Minutes

If you haven't already figured out, I'm pretty late when it comes to specific games, especially PC gaming.  Again exemplified by the fact that this game is 5 years old and I'm just starting to play it now; or well, late last week.  Early last week, I couldn't even tell you anything about the game except that it was an FPS, there was a Tank with a huge gun, and a Medic that always seems to be behind him.  In it's most basic form though, Team Fortress 2 is an FPS with character classes.  I think that's a really awesome concept that I haven't seen in FPS games before.  There's no campaign mode, from what I can tell anyway, only multiplayer madness, which I was a little surprised about and something I'll have to get used to.

So since this game is 5 years old, there's no sense in me going into specifics about the game that pretty much everyone seems to already know about.  Everyone except this guy!  Which is cool.  I don't feel shamed.  It's a fun game that I'll continue to play, as long as people aren't bigotty-ass-hats when it comes to shit talking.  Shit talking is fine, just don't be an annoying 10 year old bigotty-ass-hat about it.  That's all I'm asking for, just a friendly game where we can try and kill each other like civilized people.

Current Time Invested:  2 Hours

So out of the four games that I've been dipping my toes into, with Penny Arcade's On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3, I've sort of dunked my entire body in and only occasionally come up for air.  As of the writing of this, I've put in 8 hours of game play and I feel like I might be halfway through.  Maybe.  I'm not sure.

Precipice 3 continues with similar themes and styles of game play that were present in the first two installments, although there seems to be a serious lack of Fruit Fuckers in this game, but I think that was explained in the end of Precipice 2.  Either way, my reasoning for feeling that I'm at least half-way through the game is that since there are a pre-set number of enemy encounters (enemies are visible on screen), which means there's a pre-set amount of gold/gil/$ available and I just bought the highest level weapons for my party.  Maybe I'm farther along than I thought?  I hope not, because I really like this game, but since it's made by Zyboyd games (the same people who did Cthulhu Saves the World and Breath of Death VII).

There's a lot of references to previous RPGs of the NES genre such as Dragon Warrior, Final Fantasy, and there's a music cue that I swear sounds like the "Overworld" theme from Ultima III: Exodus, but maybe that's just me.

Current Time Invested:  8 Hours

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
The Parts of My Brain Fighting for Control

Also, this game comes out (again) in 11 days.
It will consume your life (again).

Originality: 2 Out of 3 Stars

There's something about the scoring system in some games that kind of gets to me.  I don't mean "gets to me" in a positive emotional sense.  I mean in the way that something gets under your skin, gnaws at your spinal cord, burrows into your soul and implants the thought/feeling/knowledge that you are an inferior human being that cannot reach the potential that the Creator intended for you to strive towards.  There are many games that fall under this category, but they all fall under the category-like category of "Stared" scores.  You know, like in Angry Birds, when you kill the last pig with your kamikaze standard Red Bird, you score 47,620 points and BANG!, you earn yourself two out of three stars.  You are a worthless, ugly bag of mostly water.

You might as well just kill yourself now and save humanity the humiliation of your continued existence.

It's not just Angry Birds either that have a star-like system of judging you on your performance that is visually separate from the score.  Yes, I know that the number of stars is directly related to your score, but it's still separate.  You have your score, then you have the visual representation of that score, just in case you didn't know that your score is quantifiable in star currency.  There're also games like Pilotwings Resort, Super Scribblenauts, Crayon Physics Deluxe, Super Meat Boy, Hidden Objects: Gardens of Time where you're not only scored numbers, but with objects as well.

You can "complete" a level with only one star, but that's like skating through school with a D+.  "You didn't fail, but we feel that there's so much more you can do."  You can move onto the next level, but you'll feel a sense of shame if you don't earn at least one extra star, and by one extra, we mean all three.  In the case of Super Scribblenauts and Crayon Physics Deluxe, you only get the three stars (or crowned star in the case of Scribblenauts) if you're "original" enough.  You mean you used a chainsaw instead of creating a Rube Goldberg device with only two objects to fell that tree?  You only get a star.  No crown.  Shame on you.  Shame.

And I do honestly feel slightly shamed whenever I pass over a level if I haven't officially "completed" it yet.  In the BIT.TRIP.RUNNER level "Odyessy," I've gathered 78 of 93 gold bars and I'll be damned if I try and beat that level without missing a single gold bar.  After my um-teenth time trying to get any specific bar and "dying", I told myself that I'll work on passing the level first and "maybe" come back and get all of the gold bars when damn well good and ready.

I do realize that the star currency is partly there for bragging rights and in some games you need a certain number of stars earned in order to unlock other areas/missions to complete, which is the case with Pilotwings Resort.  In PR, you usually only need to earn two stars on each level to unlock the next series of missions.  If in the previous series you three stared all the missions, you won't need as many to unlock the next set.  This line of thinking/scoring I'm okay with I guess, at least for the most part.  In CPD, I still feel bad if I'm not able to score three stars if I haven't been clever enough and I know that missing that one extra star consistently will add up over time and I won't be able to access the last level; or something along those lines.  It'd be like if in Super Mario Bros. 3 your score gave you up to three gold mushrooms and to access the airship stage you had to have a certain number of mushroom, and then to fight Bowser, you had to have 170 out of 216 golden mushrooms.  That might actually be a thing in New Super Mario Bros., but I'm just guessing here.

I feel that's enough ranting/commentating.  You get my point.  I'll bust my butt to a certain point, but I won't kill myself over it.  And that's why Preparation-H exists.  Goodnight everybody!

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Publicizing Gaming Impotence Since 2012