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I bought this new HD remaster version of Okami that came out on PS3 a couple days ago, and I've been ripping into it just like I did back when I got the original PS2 version. It's comforting to me that it still holds up, still feels intelligent and well-made. It's less surprising as a game now though, which is a testament to its refinements—lots of games have since borrowed elements that Okami introduced.

Though Halloween (that's today!) seems like the ideal time to get all crafty and dress up in a homemade representation of your favorite geeky pop-cultural figure, one serious pixel-art fan says there's more to his work than just making costumes. Dan Cattell first made a splash in game circles with widely-viewed pictures of his work—life-sized video game sprites that are worn as suits and fully moveable by the people inside—last year.

In Japan, companies have to pay a certain amount of money, a small tax, to sell toys. For some reason, if their toy includes a kind of candy item, the item is classified as a candy instead of a toy, and the tax is either reduced or negated. It is for Precisely This Reason that the shelves of many Japanese grocery stores and supermarkets, despite lacking exotic items like "

Despite the gaming riches now available to me in this modern era, last week I spent a couple hours playing through the Sega Genesis version of Aladdin in its entirety and then for essentially no reason at all other than I felt funny in my brains, I popped in Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? and played two cases in a row. Why do I do this shit? Well, first of all, it is no secret that I love small, short games.

For whatever reason, probably somewhere between misguided nostalgia for the SuperFuture of "multimedia" interactivity, an inexplicable attraction to city pop, and a love of all things cyberpunk, I've found myself recently venturing outside the realm of Nintendo to re(?)-explore those forbidden early-90s Sega waters. You might have seen the beginnings of my most latest spat of infatuation not so long ago with my long-ish love-letter to Snatcher, a bit of enthusiasm that got temporarily derailed by La-Mulana and a string of neat Wii U news but is now back on in full force during the pre-holiday games lull.

Despite the overtly slutty attire of the cover-adorning main character Solange, Code of Princess for the 3DS actually doesn't seem to have much to do with those perfectly spherical chest potatoes. What we actually have here is a seemingly-competent beater from Agatsuma Games, who you may (not) know for making almost a dozen Japanese Anpanman games and this. I went back and forth on getting it for a while, cause it's annoying to import Japanese games translated to English and released in America from America back to Japan so I can play them on my American 3DS.

I'm not gonna sit here and claim I invented rhythm games since I already kinda did that before, but get this, I totally invented rhythm games. I distinctly remember tapping out little songs on my Nintendo controller buttons and being like "hey why isn't this a game?" And then later it was. Even though I've played basically every one of them that's been released ever in history, I probably haven't ever had such a weird relationship with any of them as I do with the "

Did you hear about this? My lines and feeds and whatever are lighting up. Apparently the new "Nintendo" Wu system will be sold in stores one month from now. A single month! Hey, I gotta question for you. Do you remember when other systems were about to come out last time? That is exciting times isn't it. I remember quite specifically me and Cory talking on ICQ or whatever idiots used back in double-last-gen to talk on the Internet before YouTube, and the 360 was about to come out, and then the cases for the games started showing up in stores.

I tried to space it out as long as I could, but last week I finally got the last hat in StreetPass Mii Plaza. I finish new puzzles no more than a week after they come out. I have reached the maximum limit for "fantastic" ratings (yes, there is a limit for some reason, it is 100). I have 300 play coins waiting, and have gotten all but a handful of accomplishments.

Oh man, I busted my own chops repeatedly and I finally got a sweet score in the new downloadable Coin Challenge Pack A for New Super Mario Bros. 2! And now to see how this score stacks up against the rest of the world by logging onto the online leaderboards that they said I can compete on! It's not a great score, only like 16,000 but... oh who cares I am so excited!