A Self-Proclaimed Dreamer

     Back in the 90's and early 2000's, Wario was a huge character. He started as the final boss of Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins for the Game Boy Color before getting his own series of platformers, starting with Wario Land and later getting five more entries in the series, including one for the ill-fated Virtual Boy. While Wario is still a big character now, and has gotten two Warioware games on the Nintendo Switch, the Wario Land series has been dormant since Wario Land: Shake It!  came out for the Wii 16 years ago. This series of 2D platformers was incredibly clever and creative, so it's such a shame that it doesn't get the love and respect of some of Nintendo's other titles. I'm happy to say that the spirit of Wario Land is still alive and well in the indie space, and leading that charge is a game called Pizza Tower . It's not a very long game, and seems to heavily encourage speed running, so I'll try my best to get my thoughts out in a si

      This month marks yet another big milestone for me, and I continue to grow a little more every year. I have been writing this blog for four years now, at a pace of one post a week, only missing a few chances to write something here and there! Though I haven't always posted all of my blogs on different social media, once I started to, it made me feel much better than to just have something for me to be proud of without anyone else seeing. For those of you who don't know me very well, or if this is your first exposure to my blog, my name is Jonathan Bowers, and I started this project out of a desire to do something more creative during the pandemic. It's pretty timely that this week marks this milestone, because some new friends asked me just last week where I got the title, "A Self-Proclaimed Dreamer," and I was happy to tell them why. Growing up, I was very shy and typically let things go pretty quickly. I had lots of thoughts in my head, but I didn't wan

     Hey friends, I think I would be making a wild understatement here if I were to tell you that the Paper Mario franchise has had some weird steps. The series began with two solid turn-based RPGs, then an action RPG/Platformer, then a couple RPGs with linear pathways, limited characterization, and terrible battle mechanics, followed by a game with great world building, but still pretty bad battle mechanics. In the year 2024, to the joy of everyone, Nintendo announced a full remake of what many consider the crown jewel of the franchise, Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door.  It was a great game when I played it as a kid, but I never beat it back then, the final boss was just too hard for me. This is probably because I didn't understand how RPGs worked, so hopefully I'll have an easier time going through it this time around. Everyone hop on the boat, we're headed for the seedy town of Rogueport today! Just Another Normal Adventure for Mario!     Paper Mario: The Thousand Y

     Hey friends, it's rare that a game will come out and it just so completely resonates with me that I almost have to play the whole thing as soon as possible, but that's what happened last week. Astro Bot was released on September 6th, and it was a joy to play through from beginning to end. There are very few games of this quality and genre that aren't put out by Nintendo, and it's such a delight to see Sony not only putting out an excellent 3D Platformer, but also appealing to nostalgia and making a connection between these older franchises and some younger fans. It's time to board the PS5-shaped ship, friends, because it's time to go to space with Astro and his friends! An Intergalactic Quest!     Astro Bot is the sequel to the PS5 pack-in game, Astro's Playroom,  which functioned as a tech demo for the console itself as well as what the DualSense controller could do. Even though the PS5 has been out for four years now, it's still probably the bes

     Hey friends, I have a question for you all today. How do you know when you're ready to take the next step? In any situation, be it a romantic relationship, a job that you want to become more involved with, a project that you want to do, how do you know when you're ready for it? Sometimes these realizations come in moments where things seem the bleakest that they've ever looked, when a change has to be made, or you'll be crushed. In the smash box office hit, Frozen 2, Anna faces a similar situation.      Elsa is dead, Olaf has come undone without Elsa's magic, Kristoff hasn't been in the movie for the past 40 minutes because the writers didn't know what to do with him in this film. Anna doesn't know if there's any way back from what has occurred to her friends or family, her life seems completely hopeless. It would be so easy for her to just give in to the feeling of helplessness and just cry, but instead she focuses on the need to keep going and

      Hey friends, lots of gaming news coming out every week, huh? This week, we got a Nintendo Partner Showcase and an Indie World showcase back to back, so I thought it would be good to spend a little time going over some of the announcements that were shared this week as well. This presentation was only 40 minutes with the two segments combined, so I should be able to be a little more short-winded than I have been on some topics. I'm almost hoping for less gaming news next week because there has been so much recently, I've only been able to write about that for a while! Thanks for hanging with me while I focus so much time on my favorite topic. Two shows for the price of one!     This is the first time that Nintendo has ever combined two of their smaller showcases into one big showing, and I feel like it went over really well! The two best announcements for me were definitely getting Pizza Tower and a DS Castlevania collection on switch right after the presentation. Indie