Saturday, February 19, 2011

Anniversary! Also, important info.

Hey, guys! Guess what? It's Leave Luck to Heaven's first anniversary!

Man! I feel..a little proud that I've gotten this far. Not that I ever thought of quitting the whole thing, mind you, but I'd like to think that I traveled farther than I thought I would.

Before we get into the juicy announcements, I'd like to discuss the pros and cons of what I've accomplished over the past year.

The Good Stuff

-It might interest you to know that Leave Luck to Heaven has achieved over 16,000 page views. Shocking, isn't it? Well, just about 99.9% of the hits result from the wonder that is Google Image Search, so perhaps I shouldn't get too excited. In particular, people seem to love my Super Mario Bros. and Soul Silver pictures...

- I've come to find that I love writing gargantuan reviews instead of the smaller ones you see on most websites. I've never felt comfortable at all writing reviews of those sizes, and while some may see me as going overboard, I feel having the reviews at that level is just the right size for establishing all of my thoughts and feelings. A size fit only for a humongous Nintendo fan!

-Of the three games I went over previously, I feel Mario Kart DS was the one that had the best transition. I never actually finished my Super Mario Bros. Views, and my Kirby's Adventure Dreams were, as much as I was excited to discuss the game, had a ton of imperfections and I just stopped caring near the end. With Mario Kart DS, I discussed nearly every facet of the game and had an awesome time doing so. Plus, I felt going over the characters was a nice touch (although I regret never getting around to R.O.B). I never thought one could talk so much about Mario Kart!

The Bad Stuff

-That said, there were a couple of things that went wrong with it. For one thing, I had planned the retrospective pieces to nab my thoughts and feelings about certain topics while I had first played the game, but instead most of them came off as rambling, non-related issues that included much more teen angst than I was aiming for. It was my first time doing such a feature and while I was aiming for it to be an essential component of the Mario Kart DS Laps, it didn't really capture the essence of my time with it and instead served as a soapbox to let my feelings out. Sorry about that.

Then you have the fact that it went on much longer than I had intended. In fact, that's been a problem with a ton of things on here recently. Expect an announcement on that when you scroll on down.

-I also made some broken promises, most notably in saying I would review certain games (Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story and WarioWare D.I.Y), but I never got around to doing so. The main reason? I didn't push my motivation hard enough and as such most of my posts were late and those reviews were swamped in the mess that followed.

So I think that's about it.

What can you expect in the blog's future?

-From now on, all games will be completed within the span of two months. You can expect game reviews within a month after release. I'm also going to be focusing on posting on the weekends (Friday to Sunday) and Wednesday, so check the blog on those dates.

-I will be continuing to integrate retrospective pieces into my game posts, but they will focus more on my surroundings and feelings when playing the games. Plus, most of the ones I'm planning weren't surrounded by doom and gloom like Mario Kart DS was, so you can expect happier ones.

-A new feature will be introduced next month!

-The next game I'll be going over has been decided. Your two hints are as follows:

a) It's not quite as recent as Mario Kart DS was, but in a way, it is more recent! Also, we're arriving at its 10th anniversary.

b) It's a short game, so I'm probably going to dwindle the limit of posts from 10 to about seven or eight.

Annnnnnd that's about it!

See you next week for a new entry in Games I've Been Playing!

3 comments:

  1. Congratulations on the landmark and I wish you luck on your future posts!

    As much as I would have liked to see a post on 'Inside Story' (I'm a massive fan of the Super Star saga games!), Nintendo has so much to write about that it all evens out in the end.

    Again looking forward to the posts to come.

    And side note, I did recently and finally get a copy of Donkey Kong (if I did not perhaps mention that already) and I must say your coverage on it was pretty spot on, including the difficulty, much to my surprise. After the similar New Super Mario Brothers, which I thought was pretty easy, DKCR really humbled me.

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  2. In case you're wondering, I did love Bowser's Inside Story and thought its twist of the standard Mario RPG gameplay mechanics was incredibly clever. In all honesty, though, I still think the original Superstar Saga was the best of the series. Not to turn a total 180, but I feel as if the latter two games missed a certain ingredient that made the original so charming. That, and I just wish the game was longer!

    So you finally got Returns! Great! It really is amazing how long that game engrossed me. With the exception of the past couple of weeks (Crazy schedule), I've been practicing my time trials constantly. Now that I think about it, it's a great counterpart to Mario Kart DS.

    Totally forgot to mention this in my post: The next game will arrive in March. I'll be cutting down on posts for a little bit (expect only "Games I've Been Playing" for the rest of this month and that's it), but will be back in full swing next month.

    Can't wait to discuss this one!

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  3. Congrats Anthony!!! I'm really proud of all that you've accomplished!!

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