A Self-Proclaimed Dreamer

       Hey friends, it has been a busy year, not only for me personally, but also for the games release schedule. There have been so many good games coming out almost every month that it has been really hard to play everything that I've wanted to, and that's a sentiment that I've heard across the board. Today I would like to talk about the great games that I've played this year, though I'm sure there are quite a few that I'll forget, just because of the vast number of them out there. I'll give it my best shot, and I hope that you'll enjoy this little retrospective of the past year as we talk a bit about each of them! So many games, so little time...     Now, I'm not going to go through this list of highlights in any sort of chronological way, so I'm just going to go through this as I remember each game. I'll start with a fun one, Theatrhythm Final Bar Line ! I love rhythm games that focus on iconic soundtracks, and boy, there are some incredi...

     Hey friends, I'm Jonathan, a Self-Proclaimed Dreamer, and a few days ago was my birthday! A lot of times, I write this post the week before my birthday, but it has really snuck up on me this year in a way that it really hasn't previously! The day itself was fantastic, and even wrapped up with a nice surprise party from some new friends that I've made this year. I don't intend on talking too much about the day itself, even though I did have a great one. This post every year is more of a reflection of the year itself and how my life has changed during it. This year has really felt like I've begun to get things together, though I still have a long way to go! Let's just go ahead and talk a bit today, I hope you'll join me during this short recollection of 2023! Getting a little personal     I made some new friends this year, as I said, and really I feel like my life has improved so much because of them. The last few years have definitely been rough after th...

 Hey friends, so The Game Awards happened last Thursday, and I thought it would be important to just talk about a few things about it today! First of all, again, these awards mean nothing about you specifically. It's just for the people who work on the games, and the fact that Baldur's Gate 3 won Game of the Year does not mean that you will necessarily love it. All of the games that won awards here are fantastic, and deserved the awards that they got, I'm sure, but you don't need to feel ashamed or upset if your favorite games didn't win anything. The Game Awards, as I said, should be a celebration of everything in the games industry from the past year, and I felt that they did a pretty good job of that. However, many people have said that there should have been some discussion of the number and severity of layoffs in the industry from this year, which were definitely extensive. We'll get into some other controversies later on, but I just want to say that I agr...

    Hey friends! It's no surprise that I haven't talked about theme parks in a little while, even though I list that as one of my main tent-poles that this blog is held by, so it always makes me really happy when new information comes out about something that I'm really excited about! You may remember Super Nintendo World, the part of Universal Studios parks (specifically in Universal Studios Japan and Universal Studios Hollywood) based on Super Mario Bros, complete with a Mario Kart ride and all that. In the past few days, however, it has been announced that Universal Studios Japan is getting a new expansion to Super Nintendo World, based on Donkey Kong Country ! I'm really excited to hear this announcement, not only because this has been highly speculated for a while based on screenshots that we've gotten of the Orlando area which will be opened sometime soon with their Epic Universes park, but also because it's Donkey Kong Country ! Donkey Kong Country: Trop...

     Hey friends, as you know, I'm a big Disney guy, so today's writing is very on brand for me. In the year 2011, a game was made for the Xbox 360 using Kinect called Kinect Disneyland Adventures . I got that game for my birthday that year, and I had a Kinect, but I didn't use it much. The Kinect, if you don't know, was a weird camera peripheral for the Xbox 360 and Xbox One that Microsoft was really trying to push for a few years before they just pulled the plug. I played a decent amount of the game, but with most Kinect experiences, they weren't all that fun, but also they were kind of exhausting. Look up videos of people playing the "Big Thunder Mountain" minigame on that game if you don't believe me. In 2017, however, a new version of this game was created for the Xbox One, and there's a choice to play either with Kinect or with a controller. I'm going to be perfectly honest here, I vastly prefer the version with the controller that I'...