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I haven't yet seen a PSP mini that supported DLC, so I'm guessing this is about  as much as this edition is going to get. (Same sort of thing with the DSiWare version of Surviving High School; the iPhone/iPod Touch version has lots of stories, but the DSiWare version only has eight.) Doesn't bother me either way. I think the game's quite fun.

My first “finished” game of the year wasn’t a high-profile, multi-million dollar console release, or even a tiny one-man independent project. Nope…I just finished a game that lies somewhere in-between those – small, but just a shade above “unknown”. It’s a DSiWare game called Aura-Aura Climber, where you have to guide a little star as high into the sky as you can by grabbing onto circular grapple points, collecting power-ups and avoiding lightning balls and beams. There are 10 stages in the standard Score Attack mode, and after you’ve completed them all, the game unlocks “Marathon Mode” for play, where you have to go through all of the stages in order without stopping. I think I got to the fourth section of the marathon before I got struck by a lightning ball.

Endless Mode is just that – try to climb as high as you can until you either run out of time or run out of health. My highest so far is a little over 2,000m. I don’t know whether or not the placement of grapple points and hazards is randomized each time, so I’ll have to try playing that mode again a couple of times today.

Of the 30 in-game challenges, I’ve completed four – one for finishing Score Attack Mode, another for having every power-up at once, one for surviving with only a little bit of time on the clock, and one for surpassing 1,000m in Endless mode. There are more for getting crazy scores in Score Attack mode, and for seeking out hidden medals. That’s quite a lot to do in such a small-ish game (it costs only 200 DSi Points, or $2 U.S.) I expected to have to use the stylus controls to play this game, but I think using the buttons makes a bit more sense, now that I’m used to it.

I'm kinda confused too. I already own the game, but went to check the store for it again since someone tweeted that it was on sale this week.

I found myself on the cusp of a 100% completion run of DeathSpank, and spent two-and-a-half hours last night scrambling to complete every last sidequest before I went off to challenge Lord von Prong. At least one hour of that was naught but solid level grinding, darting back and forth from high-level enemy area to high-level enemy area. Once you hit level 19, that experience level curve might as well have been a cliff. It was all worth it in the end, though, to get every last trophy, finish every last sidequest, and listen to every last silly line of dialogue. Now, I need to hack/slash/shoot my way through the sequel, DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue, to see how it ends.

(Some ultimately meaningless statistics below)

Completion: 100%
Main Quests: 33
Side Quests: 79
Fortune cookies: 55
Armor collected: 105
Weapons collected: 73
Areas visited: 43
Caves Explored: 8
Footsteps Taken: 90443
Damage dealt: 12155067
Damage taken: 298047
Minutes played: 482
Total kills: 3848
Humanoids: 1524
Demons Exorcised: 347
Insects Squashed: 456
Chickens Butchered: 295
Undead redeaded: 304
Bosses vanquished: 6
Other Things killed: 916
Treasure Chests opened: 66
Barrels smashed: 1057
Money gained: 4877585
Money spent: 4072634

25 years ago today, one of the most iconic and enduring titles in video game history was released to the Japanese gaming public…one that would eventually take the United States by storm and drag it out of the funk that reeled from the video game crash of 1983.

Christmas of 1986 was a big deal to me. That was when me and my brother received our first Nintendo Entertainment System, and with it, the Super Mario Bros./ Duck Hunt pack-in game. For months, we helped guide the red-clad plumber (and that green guy, what’s-his-name) past Goombas, Koopa Troopas and Bullet Bills in order to rescue the princess. After we first started reading Nintendo Power and other hint books, we learned the secrets of the Warp Zones and the curiosity of the never-ending Minus World. There was also that trick you could use to get infinite lives by kicking the Koopa shell against the staircase in World 3-1, but I could never get in position to hit it more than three of four times before it went scattering into the pit.

I’ve played many, many, many Mario-themed sequels and spinoffs since then, but the day I was finally able to beat the real Bowser in the original game was perhaps my earliest “crowning” video game achievement. My most frustrating moment was getting past the castle in Worlds 4-4 and 7-4, because those were the ones where you have to jump on the floors in the proper order before you could get to the end. It wasn’t until Super Mario All-Stars came out in ’93 that I was able to get past them consistently (the game gave you little audio cues to let you know if you’d done things the right way. I used to take the Warp Zone in 4-2 to skip right to World 8 and save myself the aggravation. When I finally got the courage to stare that level down and play all of the Worlds in order without using the warps, I was finally fully satisfied with my experience.

What does the letter V six times sound like when said really fast? Probably a chainsaw, but never mind.

The point is that I played and finished a game called VVVVVVtoday (not in the same day; that would be a record). Outside of I Wanna Be the Guy, I don’t think I’ve died so many times in such a short time span – the final game results told me I had 539 deaths in about one-and-a-half hours of work. Finding some of the crew members in the early going is easy, but some rooms (especially the ones where you’re bouncing up and down all over the place due to anti-gravity fields) can be brutal.

The first time I rescued three of the guys, I thought I had done something wrong because the third person I rescued was the last one on the list, and that I was supposed to get them in order. Apparently that’s not the case, and I got them in order for my second go-round, and I still got transported to that weird dimension where I had to help one of them cross a rather treacherous path. There are two levels like this; one when you rescue three crew members, and another when you save four of them.

But joy of joys, there’s still bonus material to tackle. Trying the game from the beginning sounds like a good idea, if only to cut down on my death count, but I don’t expect to do too much better than I did this time around. I could probably go back and retrieve the last three trinkets I missed, two of which are hidden in the hardest-to-find spots in the game.

The Glass House. My brother and one of our friends were able to predict every single plot twist minutes before it happened. I'd like to stone the writers and director and most of the actors (but mainly Jodie Foster-lite LeeLee Sobieski).

If I see one Mandalorian in Gears 3, I'll scream.