Year 3: February Update

February has had some big news for both video games and toys. All of the toy news came out of Toy Fair last weekend; I tried to put together an overview but had a hard time with that and my post didn't turn out too great -- and I'm sure I missed a lot. As I said in that post, the Transformers crossover with the Ghostbusters is likely the coolest unveiling at the show for kids of the '80s like myself. This past week also saw Nintendo of America president and COO Reggie Fils-Aime announce his retirement. He started at Nintendo in 2003 as the executive vice president of sales and marketing and became president of the company in 2006. Many video game fans know him best from his E3 presentations back when Nintendo was still doing on-stage press conferences.

Reggie unveiling the Nintendo DS at E3 2004.

In other game news, on February 4th Respawn and Electronic Arts made a surprise release of Apex Legends, a battle royale game that is already challenging Fortnite. Speaking of battle royale, there is now a battle royale Tetris game called Tetris 99 for the Nintendo Switch. Yesterday BioWare released Anthem though the reviews haven't been great. I'm a big fan of Mass Effect and many other BioWare role-playing games but I don't have much interest in Anthem. I'll probably try it anyway since I need to get some better screenshots for work than what is being offered to the press when I have the time. I'm currently busy with Metro Exodus after completing the Persona 3 and 5 dancing games last weekend.

Tetris 99

There have been a lot of rumors surrounding Microsoft's future plans for Xbox Game Pass and what it might unveil at E3. The rumors have Microsoft making its Game Pass accessible on the Nintendo Switch which would allow Switch owners to play Xbox One games via streaming. Sony is sitting out this year's E3 and the expectation is that the future Microsoft console will be announced. As far as the blog, Facebook continues to give me fits. The gaming ad albums will not remain in alphabetical order! I apologize for that as this transition from Flickr hasn't gone as well as I initially thought it did. I'm sure I've repeated myself a few times because it bothers me quite a bit. In April I should be posting Sega ads and hope to have a week of Sega content at that time. Most likely I'll divide up the Sega ads into two or three separate posts; I've got over 160 ads which will take some time to upload and label.

Thanks again for visiting!

-Jonathan