It used to be good. That was before GameLoft decided that tokens were the way to go, and made everything impossible to buy. To be the best, you now have to grind an thousands of hours to get a car that will be bad next month.

That being said, even the ordinary campaign and multiplayer lost its luster. I used to be able to get whatever car I wanted, and race it, and feel good about destroying noobs with it. Now, everything is a grind, a reminder that there really is no attainable endgame in a game that had past its heydays.

There's a better racing game gacha out there, it's called Asphalt 9.

Ducktales is one of those gems on the NES that everyone sorta of knew about either because of the moon song, Scrooge using his cane like a pogo, or because it has similar design to Mega Man. Regardless of how you knew Ducktales, the overall take away is that it's a classic, and it is one for a reason. Each level has such charm and personality that feels like it was ripped out of the show. The Pogo Stick attack makes approaching enemies or spikes entirely different from the usual norm of platformers in it's day. The music was entirely whimsical and ear catching. Overall Ducktales is just a quality, straight forward NES game that was one of the first games to use a license property right, and really that's impressive considering the history of licensed video games. The moon song even got retconned in the new Ducktales cartoon to have lyrics, and boy does it slap.

I was supposed to go to the Tokyo Olympics this year but obviously with Covid, thats not really in the cards. Ever since I was 10 years old in 2008, the Olympics has probably been the thing I’ve been completely obsessed with, only outclassed by Nintendo stuff. I’ve just been completely infatuated every 2 years from Beijing to Pyeongchang whereno matter where I am in my life, I obsessively watch and collect newspapers and just become absorbed into all of it for 3 weeks, completely destroying my sleep schedule. Each Olympics marks a distinct point in my life and I remember each of them very emotionally. My love for the Olympics though wasnt born from this game as it might seem, being that I was a huge Nintendo nerd as a kid. I actually dont think I got this game until Christmas of 2008, which is when I got my Wii, 5 months since the Olympics were over. But I think this game (and Vancouver 2010) secretly birthed a small passion that I still love in Video Games, being games that recreate real world locations and time periods. As a kid, I absolutely loved that I could feel like I was really in Beijing at the Olympics. I would just load into an event and stare at the stadiums on the pre-highlight reel and it was so immersive. Since I cant go to the Olympics this year, I wanted to make the best of this downtime before the games start and marathon all 7 Wii, DS, 3DS , Wii U and Switch Summer Games. Starting with this one on Wii, I think it still holds up pretty well gameplay wise after all these years. A lot of the events just involve shaking the wiimote extremely violently until you have a stroke, but at least were an okay work out. Some events BLOW though, like the dream events in this one aren't very fun, and I HATE TABLE TENNIS SO MUCH. It takes forever and they make you do it like 4 different times in the circuits and your opponent always rubber bands. Speaking of which, there are alot of cases in the Master Cup where opponents just Rubber Band and just casually start setting world records and it gets super annoying. All this said though, this isn't really what I love about these games. I love the time capsule that it is. The game for a Wii Mini game collection essentially, has so much love and care put into preserving the time period. All the venues are properly named and modeled after there real world counterparts, I love the Olympic trivia, even though I wish there was more. The accurate for the time Olympic and World Records are so fun to look back at. Even details as small as the event pictographs are what they used in the real Beijing Games. Playing this game almost makes me feel like i’m a kid again back in the summer of 2008 obsessively watching the games on my CRT I asked my parents to move to my room, that which I attached bunny ear antennas to and was able to get NBC (back when you could still get over the air TV). I’m so thankful this game exists and will continue to exist, unaltered, for years to come.