Legend of Gamers: Video Game Store

Tucked away off the interstate in O'Fallon Illinois is a video game store, that like the Tardis, is surprisingly big on the inside. On a trip to the St. Louis area I had a chance to visit this awesome store and speak with the very cool manager.

Legend of Gamers can be found at 511 W US 50 in O'Fallon. This area also sports several other stores worth checking out and is well worth the trip if you will be near St. Louis.

Inside you can find a variety of arcade machines and fun decorations.

The selection of video games range from Atari titles to Game Boy games, NES, Sega and all the way up to current titles. You can find a variety of peripherals. There is also a selection of anime DVDs.Want to compete against your friends? They have a comfy space to battle it out. Check out the systems they have set up.

I really enjoyed my visit and picked up Kirby for Gameboy. Next time I'm there I'll be picking out a NES cartridge to give away in a future contest!

Java, Java, Java

I made a game!

In my Java course our final project is a fully working game along the lines of a 2D sidescroller. We've been learning how to write code at an accelerated pace. We got into GUI's after a few weeks. The challenge of the class is that it's a teaching style I have never encountered before called problem based learning. Essentially we know just enough to start a project and then must figure out the rest on our own. While progamming languages like Java certainly involve a lot of logic and math (thankfully!) there are also certain things that are very specific and not easily derived. Sometimes this feels like it might if you were learning Spanish and knew how to say Dónde and you knew that estar was a verb, but didn't know the conjugation rules nor the word for bathroom.

In the last few weeks the workload has gotten intense leading up to this very simple game. Figuring out how to write code for the specific requirements for this program is our last assignment before we begin working on the final game.

So, here it is. I made a video explaining the process and it includes footage of the "game".

T-Shirt Tuesday

Rosie the Retro-Gamer arrived at my house this past weekend!

Rosie the Retrogamer

That's right. The image that has been co-opted for numerous causes now finds itself a place in the heart of this original 80's gamer.

Head to Shirt Woot if you want to buy one for $10 and perhaps accidentally run into me sometime while I'm wearing it and you're wearing it and BOOM we'll be TWINS! (Anne of Distilled Geek Commentary knows about this and even my arch-nemesis Osmotic Ricardo has found himself wearing a black shirt and dark green pants on the same day as myself).

What's even more perfect is that it's T-Shirt Tuesday around these parts! Woot! Indeed.

New Video Game Day

Tuesdays see the release of new video games. Today also happens to be the birthday of my sexy younger man, 8-bit Zombie or Mr. Chronic Geek...

Here's how we've celebrated so far...

Red Dead Redemption came with a pack of playing cards. Sadly we haven't been able to play it yet because we are on the road right now, but I will post a review later this week.

Cat Games

Last week I picked up WarioWare DIY and when I had some free time I did the first tutorial and then was set free to make a game.

Making the game was enjoyable and very quick to learn. If you have used a variety of art programs before you'll have an advantage when using this because the fun part for me was getting the chance to draw everything by hand and then ANIMATE some if it. There are also stamps that you can use so you don''t have to draw everything. You also get to write music for the game, which again if you have used some computer music programs in the past will be very easy. Even if you haven't the interface is well explained. You can also make comic strips and records on the game, but I haven't had the time to try that out yet.

Here's the game I made. It's based on the hunger my cats seem to experience on a constant basis and their love of vegan ice-cream (they try to steal it from me).



Too bad my camera doesn't pick up all the detail, but it did a fairly decent job for being a 5 year old digital camera!

Mega Maya

Yes, it's our cat enthralled by video games as usual. In this case it's an epic boss battle in Mega Man and she is trying very hard to help...