Posts by Brandon Daiker

The more often I'm compelled to buy crappy drinks in order to obtain video game-related trinkets, the more often I wonder whether what I'm doing really involves my mouth. With the release of Dragon Quest X imminent (no seriously, it comes out tomorrow), Square Enix has partnered up with Pepsi and their atrocious low-calorie Pepsi Nex soft drink to promote the game in its native land of Japan. With certain drinks it's easy to tell who's getting the bum deal, like when the drink is way better than the toy that's attached, like maybe Boss Coffee sticks a shitty F1 racecar onto it.

Living in Japan has its drawbacks. In the age of total region-lock, I'm forced to turn to costly American 3DS cartridge imports, overpay on shipping, and wait forever for my games to arrive. I'm stuck paying exorbitant Japanese prices for PS3 games, the oh-so-beautiful Ghibli Blu-rays, and pizza (also the pizza has mayonnaise on it). And I also live in a little box the size of a deck of playing cards.

As Japan wriggles in the grip of gold fever (both via the race for medals in the London Olympics and the race for coins in the just-released New Super Mario Bros. 2), I can't help but try and shake the onset of this very same disease in me, committed as I am to my American-version 3DS system. Like the common cold, I feel it creeping up on me, little by little.

A couple beers in and my stomach full I decide the best way to kill some time in evening-clothes Kobe is to head to the arcade I frequent, they got Street Fighter III up on the second floor and it's fifty yen a play. It's one of the most reliable bets in town when I'm looking to obliterate some minutes since the machines are set easy and my coin can roll me through a lot of dudes.

I can imagine it now: on April 12, 1991, Hiroyuki Hashimoto is drunk after a long cherry blossom viewing party with his new coworkers, who he pretends to like. He wasn't a good student but he was chosen by this company, so he's stuck here for better or worse. He could have been something more, but couldn't we all have? His duty is clear. With his first paycheck he has deigns on purchasing a new Super Famicom with some of this month's earnings, and he aches for Actraiser, Final Fight, and the upcoming SimCity, all components of the system's strong launch lineup.

I guess there's a new Pikmin game coming out this Christmas for this new Wii, and Nintendo Land and some other stuff. It's gonna have the tablet controller, and some new firmware, and it's gonna have HD! But man, I just cannot muster up even the tiniest squirt of enthusiasm when it comes to talking or thinking about it, whatsoever. Not even a single drop of my liquids eke out for it, nary a vapor.

There're no shortage of impressions clogging up the Inters when it comes to the as-of-yet unreleased 3DS XL, and though I haven't read all of them because my life will not continue for 328 years, it seems that most people have decided to focus on a few of the most obvious things, things that will be immediately apparent to any turd that picks one up and uses it for more than three seconds.

What is it about Punch-Out!!, really, that keeps me at it? I've been trying for the sake of an article to finish the gold cartridge Punch-Out!! for the better part of a week now, having crushed the first two of the game's three circuits with little trouble, but find myself now kind of stuck in the six-boxer final gauntlet: Rematches with Piston Honda, Bald Bull, Dan Flamenco, the annoyance of Soda Popinski, the frustrating Mr.

I'm sittin' at Maiko Beach next to a plastic bag of empty cans at a farewell party, cause as is common in my profession, which is the instruction of the youth of Japan in the foreign ways, the industry sees a lot of seasonal turnover. The guy next to me is trying to get rid of some old stuff he's got kicking around, and he knows I'm into Nintendo from my incessant Facebook posts constantly parading around my old-ass Famicom gets.

I never beat Pushmo, because it is hard as hell. The person who lives in the same house as me has stolen the 3DS on occasion to grind through a few levels, but I think neither of us will probably ever reach the diabolical end. Anyway, who cares about all that. We've done enough pushin' anyway. But I am not done with Pushmo! The little guy, I mean, the little Mo, who I call Pushmo even if that is not his name.