Hitman Tommy's 2012 Review

Well the first weeks of 2013 have passed us by and it looks like the beginnings of another fantastic year for me and Tyson. But before we get any further I wanted to take a bit of time to talk about some game playing memories of 2012 and share some of my favourite pickups of the year.

I can definitely say that 2012 had its fair share of hours spent gaming. I use a program called Raptr that logs how much Xbox time I log and it was somewhere in the ballpark of 460 hours last year. That’s not including all the time I spent with other console and handhelds.

In particular one of my favourite gaming memories came over the course of two days in August involving two NES games. I was on holidays from work and of course during those times I like devote as much time to playing games as possible. Anyways the one day my wife had to go to work so I started playing River City Ransom. As you may have guessed by the name of this blog this game is a favourite of Tyson and I. It had been several years since I played it beginning to end and I proceeded to spend the afternoon sitting there maxing out all the stats and making the game take way longer than it needed to. It was a fantastic way to spend an afternoon. The second day of gaming was playing Super Mario Bros 3. As I’ve mentioned before my wife is a huge Mario fan and probably played them more than I have. When she came home from work after my River City marathon it came up in conversation that she had never beat SMB3. Her brother and her used to play it all the time but she thinks she always stopped playing before they beat the game. The next morning we got up and I pulled a second chair into the game room and the rules were no warping and we weren’t stopping until the game was over. We spent several hours at it and when all was said and done we had achieved our task. Any time I can include her in one of my favourite activities makes it a fond memory.

Tyson and Tommy on a typical Saturday night.

The second memory was probably more about the act of playing than the actual game itself. In November I started a game called Nostalgia on Nintendo DS. Now I love the RPG genre but as I get older it’s hard to find time to dump 30-40 hours into a single game(with the exception of Borderlands but that’s another story). Anyways it had been awhile since I’d played a traditional RPG and Nostalgia is essentially that. Granted it wasn't the most ambitious in terms of gameplay/story it just felt great to play something that resembled a classic RPG. It took me about 30 hours to complete and when the final boss fell I felt like I had performed such an accomplishment. It definitely wet my appetite to get back to playing more of what that Genre has to offer.

Borderlands will end your life!

As has been eluded to on this blog Tyson and I made December Wii month. The purpose as it sounds was to play as much Wii as possible. I got a good jump at the beginning of the month as I played and beat Kirby's Epic Yarn. It took about 9-10 hours to finish, by no means did I 100% complete the game as there are so many items to unlock. Overall it handled really well and is one of the best games I have played on the Wii. The next game I started to play was No More Heroes. I only ended up playing about 4 hours of this and wasn't actually the first time I'd done so. I do like the game and do have to make a point of actually finishing it up and some point in time. I mainly didn't get around to it as December is a hectic month with the holidays and I just didn't find the time to get back to it. That was it for my solo Wii time but Tyson and I did get together to play some multiplayer Wii a couple days before months end. We spent an evening playing 101 in 1 Party Megamix, Deca Sports and NHL Slapshot. While all these games do have substantial single player modes they definitely gain something by playing them with someone. It might have been the ample amount of trash talk that was being committed in my living room. I would have liked to gotten some more time in playing the Wii but all in all it was an interesting idea to try and devote an entire month to one system. 

Now I could probably spend a few more paragraphs talking about all the great stuff that I played on Xbox 360 in 2012 but I think the one’s that I really enjoyed might merit their own review at a later date. I’d much rather wrap up talking about my top pickup’s of 2012. After adding so many games to my collection last year I spent a bunch of time trying to decide what my Top 5 purchases were and when I say top purchases that doesn’t necessarily mean the cheapest or best deals. I put together this list based on how happy I was to add a specific title to my collection. In some cases it was just something I really wanted to play and sometimes the reasoning ran a little bit deeper than that. So without further ado I bring you my Top 5 Pickup’s of 2012.

Hitman Tommy's Top 5 Pickups of 2012

Honourable Mentions- Boxed Copy of Castlevania NES, Boxed Copy of Jet Force Gemini N64.

5. 007 Bloodstone Xbox 360.- This game was the bane of my existence for several months. I love the James Bond Franchise so any time there’s a game based on the character that I don’t have it’s something that I would like to add to the collection. In the spring is when I spent a little more time reading it and got really pumped to play it. I also assumed given how plentiful the Quantum of Solace game is that finding Bloodstone would be a cinch. However that turned out not to be the case as none of our usual haunts had it. I even checked the retail stores and couldn’t find it. This went on for a couple months until a pawn shop we go to had it, but much to my chagrin it was beat to all hell. Tyson had to stand there and suffer through me ranting “Fuck sakes, I finally find the game and some asshole didn’t take care of it. I can’t buy it like this! ARRRGH”. To make it worse no one else wanted it in that condition so every time we went to this place I saw it sitting there mocking me. Eventually this same pawn shop got another copy of it marked for $15 and was in great shape. We frequent it quite a bit so I figured I could probably get it for $10. Ended up getting it for $5 with the explanation being "you guys buy lots of games from here". At that price it definitely helped make the wait worth it.

4. Contra 4 Nintendo DS- This was a game that was stupid that it wasn't in my collection. I love the Contra series but unfortunately hadn't picked this one up when it came out. Since then it was always something I kept my eye out for but wasn't a game we seemed to come across. I had pretty much assumed that I would have to resort to paying $20 on eBay to get a copy. Eventually a local retail store got a used copy for $15 and I snapped it up right away.

3. Run Saber SNES- This was actually a pleasant surprise to pickup. One day Tyson and I hit the local flea market cause he told me that a guy the previous day had a copy of Breath of Fire II on SNES for a decent price. I grabbed that but while I was looking through the vendors SNES games I quickly snagged Run Saber as well. This game only came on my radar in July when Mike from Cinemassacre did a video about his Top 10 obscure SNES titles. He described it as a cross between Strider, Metroid and Ninja Gaiden. That mixed with the game play footage he had made me release that this was something I needed to play. The seller had it marked for $14 and when I bundled it with BOF2 I ended up getting it for $10.

2. Goldstar 3DO w/7 games- This is a pickup I really lucked out on. I was on Kijiji in the spring and some guy was selling off some as he put it "his kids junk" from his garage. His listing didn't have a picture so I didn't know if it would actually be legit or not especially considering he listed his price as $40. I emailed him right away and he told me he'd be out of town for a couple days but that he'd save it for me. At this point I still wasn't convinced it was legit but figured I'd wait the couple days and try him again. That Friday Tyson and I were out doing our usual driving around after work. I sent another email asking if I could come by and much to my shock he got back to me with his address and told me to come on by to have a look. As we drove there I still hadn't let on what I was really going to look at. I think I told Tyson I was going to look at some Playstation 1 games or some shit. Mainly because I didn't know if this was going to pan out or not and I didn't want him to laugh at my failure. However within 20 minutes I was in his garage and he pulled out of this metal container, the contents was a Goldstar 3DO with one controller, two boxed games and five loose games. The games ended up being Gex, Killing Time, Need for Speed, Road Rash, Slam Jam 95, Shockwave and Wing Commander III. I gave him the money and walked out the crate out to the car where I finally revealed my score.

1. Metal Storm NES- This was a pickup almost 20 years in the making. When I was a kid my mom used to always order me those How to Win at Nintendo hint books that were in the Scholastic order. Every time a new one came out it always had Metal Storm in it and I would spend countless times staring at the pictures thinking about how awesome it would be to play. I usually got to rent a games a couple times a month and I can remember going to Take 3 Video and looked for it on the shelf but they never had it. I never ended up getting to play it back then and it wasn't until emulation came available that I got the opportunity. I knew that playing the emulator wasn't going to cut it and that one day I'd need to find it on NES. Well on April 27, 2012 I was at the Calgary Comic Expo and for the first time in my life I held the cartridge in my hand. It was $30 but I didn't even care. I checked it carefully to make sure that there was no major damage before I shelled over my money. To be perfectly honest this thing would have had to look like someone had set fire to it for me not to buy. It's almost 8 months later and it is still the only copy I've seen in person. Hands down was the best money I spent in 2012.

Well there it is that was my year in a nutshell. Thanks for taking the time to read this and here's hoping for more scores in 2013. Until next time it's not hoarding if you alphabetize your games!