Things We Learned This Week

Street Fighter Sackboys coming.

I don't even really care for Street Fighter and I want these LittleBigPlanet costumes. Sony may finally be learning to leverage nostalgia in the way that has paid off for Nintendo for years.

By the way, wouldn't it be fun if there was some way to reset the collectible bubbles in the LBP story levels? It's just far cooler to collect actual things while playing, and that thrill is gone after the first time through. Especially sucks when you're introducing new people to the game well after you've already grabbed everything. Then you're stuck with lame score bubbles. Crap, I'd pay for a download that inserted NEW stickers/items back inside all of the story bubbles I've already done.

Uncharted: finished in four days.

Four days sounds lousy, but I put in some intense play periods on that one. The first time I booted it up I played for five hours straight. It's been a while since I've done a Tomb Raider-style game, and I found I have sort of missed that.

Ninja Warrior Thanksgiving marathon!

Thanksgiving has become just another day where you choose which ridiculous TV marathon you want on for the day. We went with Ninja Warrior on G4. Clark has been watching it after daycare, so it was nice to catch an entire block of them. It's so nice that G4 takes Ninja Warrior seriously, rather than turning into another impenetrable Japanese import dubbed for laughs. We're always looking for good Asian role models on TV, and Ninja Warrior is a great choice... packed with both dedicated, humble athletes and silly, bizarre goofballs (yay, Mr. Octopus!) It's a reminder that other cultures are just as diverse and "real" as our own.

In related ninja news, Ninjatown for DS is damn good.

Pirates super-rares!

Even though the game is effectively dead in the water, I'm slowly picking up all of the six Savage Shores boxed sets for Pirates of the Cursed Seas. When collectible games die like this, if you liked the game at all it's generally a good thing to buy big on the waning sets. Two reasons: first, the last releases usually have far lower print runs than the sets from back when the game was popular. So if you want to sell or trade, you'll be king of the hill. And secondly, the cards from farewell sets tend to spike in power and craziness because the company is desperate to attract the eye of both new buyers and lapsed fans. I wouldn't have been surprised to see airplanes suddenly appear in the Pirates universe.

Anyway, the last Savage Shores set that I bought had a special note inside... the box contained the super-rare pack, which is four special cards bundled together in one super-rare booster. Very cool.

When was this announced?

As I was habitually comparing my trophy list to others on my PS3 friends list, I noticed two games suddenly appearing with trophy support: PixelJunk Monsters and Eye of Judgment. I can't believe I missed those announcements. Now I can't believe I need to make time to play two more games.

So is it cheap to consider holding this for a birthday present?

My parents arrived at our post-Thanksgiving event with a surprise... my mom dug out five boxes of LEGO junk from when I was a kid. And I don't mean little boxes. I mean boxes that when you hold them you can't see over the top. We stashed them in the basement because I need to go through it all... I'm talking original LEGO boxes and everything. Blacktron, original Castle, Fabuland, probably nearly everything LEGO released during the '80s.

Clark is still a little too young to adequately manipulate proper LEGO bricks, but he will be on it fast. He's getting a LEGO Batman set for Christmas; we'll see how that goes and then decide when to spring the Mother Lode of Old LEGO Product on him.