Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue

Okay, now things have just gotten silly. Long have us patient Kingdom Hearts fans weathered wacky names in 358/2 Days and Re:Coded all for the sake of Kingdom Hearts III's ever-nebulous release, but Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue? That's not just absurd -- that's pretentious word salad scribbled straight from the aspiring teenager debuting their Kingdom Hearts/Animorphs/My Little Pony crossover fanfiction into the world. Not that Kingdom Hearts wasn't already a fanfictional fever dream in itself, but how on earth am I supposed to say that with a straight face? Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue -- gads, even just typing that feels nasty. Thankfully, our ever-oblivious director in Tetsuya Nomura comes to the rescue with his faux-rocket science:

"This Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance compilation follows the previously HD work 2.5...and is worthy as taking its place as 2.6. Since Kingdom Hearts χ Back Cover/Kingdom Hearts Unchained is supposed to be the first game in the mainline series, that is being represented as '0' in the collection. And lastly, Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep is '0.1' and that then leads into Kingdom Hearts 0.2 Birth by Sleep."

Where do I even begin? The made-up math? The constant name influx? That despite said collection including Dream Drop Distance -- the convoluted but necessary step into the upcoming finale -- the presence of tech demo Kingdom Hearts 0.2 Birth by Sleep -A fragmentary passage- and movie Kingdom Hearts χ Back Cover only further inflates the baggage of confusing names and superfluous events? Granted, maybe the latter's unfair to 0.2 -- god, did I really just type that? -- but we'll get into that later.

Snake Pass Review (Hey Poor Player)

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I certainly wasn't expecting to play this so soon! Sudden review copies are funny like that. Just to reiterate, this is the PS4 version.

I'm not too sure if we'll get an in-depth review on Snake Pass here, as I think I covered pretty much everything necessary over at HPP. However, I'll admit this review did take longer than expected as I wasn't happy with my drafts throughout most of the process, so who knows!

A Very Special Christmas Gift + A Glimpse into the New Year

Hello, all! Sorry for the holiday dry spell: I was working like crazy with my parents to prepare for our Seven-Fish Dinner on Christmas Eve, not to mention there were my Christmas goodies and a...certain project I'll be sharing shortly.

So what were my new gaming-related gifts? Well, Santa deemed me a very good boy this year, so I was quite lucky to obtain both a PS4 and a brand-new gaming PC. Much as the likes of Overwatch and Dragon Ball Z: Xenoverse 2 have captivated me, there was a certain barrage of surprise gifts that were the holiday highlight. See, an aunt dropped by with no less than three boxes of old games that belonged to her grown sons. There were NES games...SNES titles...N64 cartridges...AND THIS.

Wait, is that...what I think it is?!?

It is!

Yes, that is an Atari 7600. And yes, it indeed came with NO LESS THAN TWENTY DIFFERENT GAMES FOR IT.

HUMMANA HUMMANA HUMMANA HUMMANA HUMMANA HUMMANA HUMMANA HUMMANA

Just look at that collection! The Nintendo-licensed ports of Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr. andDig Dug, my favorite Namco arcade game! E.T., the movie tie-in that nearly killed the gaming industry! A number of Star Wars games to fuel my revived interest in the famous space opera! I've certainly stumbled upon a treasure trove, eh?

Now for the bad news: like my recently-acquired Famicom, I can't play it. While the system turns on fine, I lack the proper antenna box and whatnot to hook it up. But for the moment, it doesn't matter: as a collector, all of it was an incredibly generous gift by a very awesome aunt, and I'm deeply grateful. In the future, I definitely plan to scrap together some funds and get that retro goodness going!

Speaking of the future...2016 is coming to an end. As far as the blog goes, I felt it was relatively productive. While I still didn't commit to my writing as much as I would've liked, we not only finally saw an end to Ten Years of Kirby, but produced a number of non-Kirby Nintendo game reviews. I'm very proud of all the pieces involved, and I think they rank among Leave Luck to Heaven's best efforts. My 2017 New Year's Resolution is generating a harder work ethic towards my writing, and I'm already instilling the values of hard work into improving my favorite hobby.

What do I mean? Well, see for yourself!

My basement gaming lounge is being renovated! This was something I'd been planning for a long time, but we finally got into full-gear just yesterday. As you can see, the entertainment center has been stripped bare, ready to house new items (pay no mind to that collapsing shelf on the bottom left; we'll finally fix that, too). Needless to say, a lot of cleaning and heavy-lifting was--and still is--necessary; I'm actually a little shocked things got as messy as it did, so it's all gonna take a little while.

But when it's finished, I'll finally get the chance to show it all off! Believe it or not, there's actually a LOT of room to cover, and I mean that literally, so stay tuned for that!

In the meantime, have a happy New Year!

8 PS2 games that need the PS4 upgrade treatment

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And while we're at it, here's an example of an assigned article. As you can probaly guess, this was much easier than the Zelda article, but it was fun to select fan-favorite titles that still haven't made the jump to PS4's online store.

Oh, and just so you know...most of these titles are scheduled for Worldly Weekend within a year's time, so stay tuned!