WOOHOO! WE FINALLY BEAT SUPER MARIO BROS 3!!!

we finally kicked bowser’s butt.

well, of course, nicki’s the one that got us through most of the really tough stuff. she’s the one that actually faced and finally defeated bowser. she’s better at beating the insanely tough boards like the tank brigades in world 8 or the bosses. she has better video game reflexes than i do. i’m better at the game-action that requires more finesse, like flying mario to narrow places or finding my way out of the puzzling mazes or even discovering secret passageways and short cuts. so, anyway, after expending maybe 30 lives on bowser’s castle, she finally beat bowser!

that’s so awesome. we spent more time on the last two worlds than we did on the first six combined! it took us weeks and weeks, but we finally made it through!

so of course, we had to keep going in the series. the next in the series was super mario world, but i decided to skip that one (and its sequel) and download super mario 64. NOW we’re talking.

i’d never really spent any time on a 3d platform game before. there’s a billion of ‘em out there, but i’ve never really been into video games before our wii. i’m not about to get a billion different games, and become a gaming geek, cos i don’t care all that much. my tastes are still pretty simple; i don’t really take any of it seriously. it’s nothing more than entertainment to me. a distraction. nevertheless, if she was obsessed with SMB3, then i’m obsessed with SM64. it’s such a large game, and it requires you to think in three dimensional terms. you think you’re jumping left, but if you’re not paying attention to the angle you’re facing, you might be jumping diagonally, resulting in a fall into oblivion. ‘mamma mia!’, as mario would say.

i’m having an easy time transitioning into this mode of thinking. nicki, on the other hand, is having troubles. so, basically, although she kicked my butt in SMB3, i’m kicking her butt in SM64. if she continues to have troubles, i think i’ll go back and get super mario world for her. that’s closer to SMB3’s format, from what i’ve seen.

meanwhile, i’m about two-thirds of the way through guitar hero 3 on medium. greeny came over recently, and strapped on the guitar to play a few tunes.

yeah.

i need to practice.

he’s good.

he mentioned bringing over his guitar, so that we can duel. that’ll be fun. he’ll kick my butt, but it’ll be fun.

another one i’ve been playing quite a lot of is donkey kong country. i’m actually right at the beginning of world 5, which means i’m pretty far in the game. after world 6, there’s only one last level (as opposed to an entire world of levels), the final boss level, where i face king k. rool. i played this game at someone’s house, when it was new. i forget where. but i liked it a lot at the time. i love it now. it’s a lot of fun.

all of these games will keep us busy for a while, including all the other things we have going on in our lives right now. it’s been great going back to the old nintendo games and playing them–some are old favorites, others are brand new to us. as time goes on, we’ll buy more games specifically for the wii system, but we’ve been perfectly content visiting the older games.

there you go, that’s our video game progress report, brought to you by countless wasted hours.