Fire Emblem Awakening is the game that just keeps giving

My first experience with the Fire Emblem franchise was meeting Marth and Roy in Smash Bros. Melee. A cool looking Japanese only franchise, I thought, but that was it. My next, and first proper Fire Emblem experience came when I was offered Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones as a free download on my 3DS as part of the early adopter Ambassador scheme. I was hooked.

I used to really enjoy the Advance Wars series, but something happened that stopped my love affair with that series. It wasn't anything traumatic, like the plot for Days of Ruin playing out in my personal life. I just kinda stopped enjoying them. They became stale. In comparison, Fire Emblem reignited my love for turn based war strategy games, but Sacred Stones showed no signs of getting boring.

I bought Awakening a month or so ago and I'm still playing it. Granted, I'm not able to play for super long day spanning sessions due to work and family commitments, but I've flicked open my 3DS to play almost every day since owning it. This game wants to you enjoy yourself. Not only is the campaign suitably lengthy (I haven't beaten it yet), but the story is great and the art style beautiful. The game is packed with additional side quests, further challenges that randomly pop up on the game map and Streetpass and Spotpass challengers that you can face off against.

On top of that are the free additional side quests that are gifted to you once a week. Additional weapon are given, and even more challengers - the ghosts of characters from previous Fire Emblem games.

It's awesome. There is so much content to enjoy. And on top of all the free DLC is the paid DLC missions, of which there are 12 (at the moment). I haven't even dipped into these yet, but they add to the sheer wealth of content on offer from this game. I'll talk about my adventures with it more over the next few weeks.

I've also bought the original Mega Man on the Wii U Virtual Console. Playing the NES games is something I've always intended on doing, but Mega Man being announced as a new character for the upcoming Smash Bros. games pushed me to buy the game. I've only played Cut Man's level, but the notorious difficulty is instantly present. I'm looking forward to playing it more.

And I also finally played Super Metroid. Wow. So far I've only had a 10 minute session, but that game is phenomenal. The atmosphere created with 16 bit SNES graphics and music is great and really pulled me in immediately. Again, I'll be posting more about this over the next few weeks.

The beginning

I love videogames. I've loved them since my mum bought me my first ever console - a Sega Master System with a built in copy of Sonic the Hedgehog - and I still do to this day.

I've become a surprise collector. Surprise in the sense that I've never actively sought to collect systems or games, but due to my bucking of the trend of selling a game once you've completed it, I've amassed a neat little collection of games and consoles. I never intended it to be this way, but I can't bare to separate from them.

I'm not the typical game player of today, either. Don't get me wrong, I'm not reinventing the wheel or anything, but I'm a 26 year old, male, Nintendo fan. I do have an Xbox 360, yes, but only for a select few games. I'm not the biggest fan of first person shooters (or third person ones, for that matter). Give me a good old fashioned collectathon platformer where every item has a pair of googly eyes on it and the characters are all anthropomorphic animals and I'm happy. I'm a huge retro fan and firmly believe that some of the best games in existence are from the 8 and 16 bit eras. So if you're expecting blog posts where I brag about my latest gnarly kill and head shot, look somewhere else.

I decided to create this blog to journal my adventures in gaming. As a soon to be father, I may not play as much as I used to, but my love is still there, and where I go, this blog will go, detailing what I play, think and feel as I explore new games, old games and whatever other games I can find.

It''s going to be fun.