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Tag: Star Wars

  • Exploring the galaxy with the December 2015 Loot Crate.

    Exploring the galaxy with the December 2015 Loot Crate.

    It’s been a month, so it’s time for Loot Crate to come my way once again. I already wrote about last month’s Loot Crate, and I thought that I might as well write about them as I got them. Since Loot Crate is probably one of the more popular things in terms of nerd culture, this is more of a personal archive for myself, since most of the stuff inside is already well known on the web.

    I almost didn’t get this crate, as I found it in the trash. My dad had accidentally threw it in there, thinking it was just an ordinary package. Thankfully there was no signs of damage or smells on the box, so I was able to recover it before it would’ve suffered an untimely demise. So let’s tackle this month’s Loot Crate, of which the theme is “Galaxy”.

    I mean, these look so generic-looking that I’m not surprised that it was almost in the trash.

    Oddly, the box is in a different, more box-like shape this month compared to last month’s, I wonder why that is. After cracking the Loot Crate open, I start to find out why…

    Halo 5: Guardians ammo crate container

    But I thought we already finished the fight…

    Hey, it’s a box within a box! Xzibit would be proud. More specifically, it’s a box shaped like an ammo crate that features the logo of the UNSC, the main military group of the Halo franchise.

    My experiences with Halo involve playing a leaked beta build of the PC port many a year ago, and co-oping through Halo 3 with a friend, which had a rather interesting tale that might be a bit much for this kind of blog. Since I was mostly a PC gamer by the time Halo hit the scene, I never really found much interest in the franchise. It wasn’t terrible, but I never got sucked into the cultural zeitgeist of it all. A shame really.

    There’s also a code for some unlockable items for the then recently-released Halo 5: Guardians, but alas I’m still stuck in the Xbox 360 world, thus I don’t think these items will ever get redeemed. That’s okay to me, because I can’t imagine that game being any good.

    One day I should give Halo another chance. Either through Xbox or on PC. I bet those games are really fun in co-op.

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  • I Bought Stuff! 8/29/2012: Pre-PAX Edition.

    I Bought Stuff! 8/29/2012: Pre-PAX Edition.

    So, the Penny Arcade Expo is coming up. That popular video game thing in Seattle that has all the cool video game and nerd-culture related things that’s right in my neck of the woods.

    But instead of packing and getting ready to hop on a train tomorrow, I decided to go check some thrift stores and hope to find some interesting stuff. And I definitely found some of that. This will be a small, but interesting haul indeed.

    Quite the bizarre combination on hand here.

    • Virtua Fighter (32X, $3)

    • Metal Head (32X, $3)

    • The LucasArts Archives Volume IV: The Star Wars Collection Volume II (PC, $5)

    Over the years I’ve amassed a fairly small collection of 32X games, that ill-fated add-on for the Sega Genesis that was pretty much the Beginning of The End for Sega. I have a fair share of the ones people remember like Doom and Virtua Racing Deluxe, but a few other games elude me primarily because of how popular they are, like Knuckles Chaotix. In hindsight I should’ve grabbed it when they were $30 for a loose cartridge, because it’s definitely much higher these days.

    Virtua Fighter really doesn’t need much explanation: A 3D fighting game in the infancy of 3D graphics in arcades. The 32X version is likely an acceptable version of that game, but probably not the most ideal version to play these days. I’m not even big on fighting games, but I consider this significant enough to own.

    Metal Head is basically a first-person shooter in a mech. While not particularly new — stuff like MechWarrior existed for years before this — it’s something unexpected for the 32X, and had some surprisingly good 3D out of it. A shame it was put onto this dying system.

    Both of the Goodwills I went to had a surprisingly influx of NES, SNES and Genesis games, but most of them were the common licensed schlock or sports games. I even saw the infamous Pit Fighter for the SNES, but I’d rather not waste my money on garbage I’d only own for the novelty value.

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