-=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- (c) WidthPadding Industries 1987 0|280|0 -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=- -=+=-

Four Pin badges!
Chibi Chick, Sheriff Kitty, Pony/Unicorn, and "Always Sleepy Club Member"

(All games played on a DS Lite, because the GBAsp screen is bloomin' awful!)

GBA Games
Yoshi's Island : Super Mario Advance 3
You all know how this one goes.


Monsters Inc
A generic little platformer with tiny tiny levels. Walk left to right, but also back and forth (3 layers of back+forth) and ... I'm not sure what the goal is. There are lots of rooms and (of course) plenty of doors, and .. I'm not really sure what I'm doing!!
I can roar at the men in yellow suits.. !?


DS Game
Peppa Pig : The Game
A typical DS era shovelware game for kids.
Tap the bubbles in the bath! wow!
Flip the pancakes! Wow!
And the MOST repetitive background music you've ever heard.
Gaah!!!

Good grief, this cost a pissing fortune.

Early this year, I got my printable boxes working, and decided they might be nice for an Advent Calendar, but needed something to put in them.
Pin badges would fit nicely.. So I hunted Amazon and found a couple of sets of assorted pin badges, which looked right up the alley.
£65 was spent on two bags of pin badges, along with a couple of hanging display things which, even after several months of being squished flat on the floor under a hefty number of old laptops, still seem to spring into their native folded-up ness, so haven't yet been affixed to the wall like they oughta be.
I might try a bit of blue-tack or some drawing pins or something.. So much for the little stringy hanger bit on them!

A month or so later, I was shuffling around my old handhelds, and the printed box was there.. I wondered.. Could a Gameboy Advance cart fit in the box?!
It didn't.
.. But I could probably print the boxes a bit bigger, right?!!
Sure, why not.
So I trawled eBay, found a job lot of 16 GBA carts for £30 and whipped them up.
I also did the same for DS carts a month later, though being newer games they ended up costing £60. .. But were also a larger collection, so I've got 24 days worth of those! Woot!

I then tried to find ways to print larger boxes, but inevitably failed to get them printable on a single A4 sheet, so ended up hunting for a nice fillable "build your own" advent calendar which would hold everything.
The lovely village calendar has "extra large" drawers, but even then the GBA carts don't "quite" fit into the smaller drawers, what with their little nobbily bits either side, so instead, they only went into the larger drawers.
..
Thankfully I hadn't bought the last remaining 8 GBA carts to fill up the 24 days!!

*sigh*
So much tat, it's insane..

Badges and Badge Holders : £65
GBA Carts : £30
DS Carts : £60
Wooden Village Advent Calendar : £80 (fuxake!)
Total Cost : £235 .. Oh my god!!!

Thankfully that was spread throughout the year, so it's not "too" bad, and the little wooden village advent calendar will be reused in future years, so that's ok.

Badges
Make Coffee, Not War
Stay Pawsitive
A moonlit cloud!
and.. I will shit on everything you love
.. Lovely!

Game
DS : Classic Games


This is a lovely collection of game ideas that I can pinch for Shoebox

Badges
Happy Shining Sun
White Four-Leaf Clover
Panda turns his back on us
Sleepy Bunny (I don't think it's supposed to be sleepy, it just wouldn't sit right because of the rounded bottom!)

DS Game
Fashion Designer! Wow, I can be the artist!!
Except I don't think I can. Couldn't find a "Draw a Dress" option, it was all options for pre-drawn dresses, and .. IMHO that's not really the point, is it?

I mean, go back 40 years and you had that Fashion Wheel thing, where you could draw your own fashion onto the ladies. Here, I might be mistaken, but I don't believe you can do that.
Just pick pre-made swatches, pre-drawn faces, pre-coloured hair.
No art skills involved.
Boooooo...

Badges
Skeletor : I'm fairly sure he wouldn't say this
Fish : This fish refused to stay the right way up.. Unless this is the right way up..?
Shark : Live every week like it's AGameAWeek..
And Sleepy bunny two!? Repeat!!!

DS Game
Solitaire DS by Fantastic.TV
Contains an insane 101 variations of Solitaire, so I might end up yoink'ing more than a few of these for the Shoebox!



Quality wise, it has a nice enough interface, but the ingame screen is awfully dull looking, especially when you look up at the completely static top screen and game background. I mean, sure there's nothing going on up there, but could it have killed them to have put little animations or something up there?
But, that's just being nit-picky. It's a great quality game, and the engine's nice and fast. No quarrels from me.

Badges
Milk Carton
White Rose
Rambo Rabbit
and a lovely Blitz-like Rocket \o/yeay\o/

DS Game
Space Invaders Extreme 2
Oooh yeah!!!



Pa-pa-pow

Badges
Bee Happy!
Moon and Cloud
Strawberry
Evil Kitty with a Knife!

DS Game
Brain Challenge

One of many cash-grab Brain Training wannabes

GBA Games
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Charlie finds a mysterious $10 Dollar Bill floating around in Mid-60's England.

Crash Bandicoot 2 - N-Tranced

Man, I forgot just how well polished these GBA 2D Crash games were.
Mmmmm...

Badges
Tom and Jerry (I'll be honest, this one took me a while, as I was holding it 90 degrees, and thought it was a weird looking grey cloud with an odd wobbly orange moon...)
Lightning (Unless this turns out to be another cartoon character!)
Fried Egg
and a Polar Bear

DS Game
Monster Trucks DS



Get through the convoluted menu, and you get a nicely well-presented 3D racing game, with loads of great big lumpy bits to drive over.
Brum Brum!
.. Though, the Monster Trucks do tend to get in the way of each other whilst driving around! It's great fun when in first place, but the second you're behind another truck, you're .. trucked..

GBA Game
Bratz : Rock Angelz



Hope you're a good reader!



... Hope they're a good writer...
"No one who isn't allowed can enter."
Clunky English, much..!?

The game sees you walking around teeny tiny areas (The DS can do 2x2 screen sized backgrounds, and this seems to be a common theme, going through these games) and chatting to other Bratz&Co, and getting keys and walking a bit more, and .. I gave up I was bored.

Badges
Rainbow!
Coffee!!!!
SUNSHINE!!!!
.. and a lesser cheery, evil looking face thing, which I'm fairly sure is a "something", but I'm damned if I can recollect what it is.

DS Game
Dolphin Island


Straight from the "Explain things to the audience using phrases that people would never use in real life.." handbook


The game involves you clicking items on the island, then having pictures pop up with phrases, then eventually you have to care for all the animals, and it becomes kinda sim-like.
I don't like the camera, though. If you drag the 3D map left or right, the camera tilts in a "oooh, motion!" kinda way, but it REALLY makes me nauseous.
I'm not sure I can turn that off, anywhere.

I might play this some more, depending on whether I can find a toggle for that!

Badges
Cat and a Fish in a Bag
I'm a F***ing Unicorn
Mushroom
and .. .. I want to say it's a white fox..? Could be a cat, but those don't look like cat ears to me.

DS Game
Lego Battles



It's an RTS thing. I'm not 100% sure what I'm doing, though, so I think I'll need to play the tutorial to find out.
The menu is those little lego pieces on the top left of the touchscreen, and when expanded, it's baffling, if I'm honest. I don't know what the icons mean.
I'll have to learn!!


3DS Game?! (When I order the job lot of DS games, they weren't all DS games!)
Asphalt 3D

Select Your Car


Meters for Brake, Revdi-g, Inverse sVre and Faye RuRugard


(yes I know you can read them on the bottom screen, but .. come on, guys!)


Game itself.. .. Not the greatest. The car doesn't feel all that great.
I know you might be thinking "Oh, come on, Jay, this is 1st gen 3DS", but .. We had arcadey car physics sorted in the 80s. That bit should be easy.

Badges
Paper Aeroplane
Pixel Unicorn
Good Luck Cat
And a crescent moon.

DS Game
Bratz : Super Babyz


Game Fail

Game was tried out on both DS and 3DS, but didn't work on either.
I even tried blowing the cartridge!

Badges
Mountains
Whale
Pinwheel
Another little Blitz'y rocket
and .. 1% Power


As for the DS game, this is the second Bratz game in a row, and it doesn't work like yesterday's.
Hmm.
Someone must really hate these Bratz games..!