This post is just note to myself to document the video games I have finished.
(Most recent at bottom)
22/08/2025 Grim Fandango
This summer I bought a Nintendo Switch 2 with the money I received as part of a Silver Star I was awarded at work. I have never had a recent first generation console, rather tended to always come across one well after the prime, so it was quite cool getting the Switch 2 within a month of its launch. And the first game I played on the first generation 2025 console? A game released 27 years ago in 1989: Grim Fandango. Talk about aging well. This game is amazing, and I can only imagine the stir it caused 27 years ago. Wait, I do not have to imagine the stir, because my brother highly recommended it to me at the time, and he even gave me a pirated copy, that I never quite got around to playing. So when I fired up the Nintendo Store and saw it on sale for 3.24€ and could not resist. And I have been enjoying the Switch 2, especially the option to go mobile tremendously (seriously Nintendo rocks, what a genius idea).
When not mobile, I was playing using an old Panasonic TH-37PX60EH Plasma TV that must be from 2006 or so that was not in use at my mother in laws house on the northern coast of spain (I think my father in law had bought it mostly for football games (read soccer by Americans)). I was really surprised to learn even had HDMI so connecting it was plug and play (I had thought it had a SCART connector).
I finished Grim Fandango in a couple weeks, but due to no credit of my own, but of copious use of walk-throughs. I really take my hat of to anyone who finished this game on their own. Even with the walk-through there were times it took me a while to figure things out. Amazing story, amazing artwork, amazing voice work, and really amazing animation, especially for 1997 and the Pentium 133 the game was designed for.
I just read this part of the Wikipedia article about the game, what a pity:
Grim Fandango received praise for its art design and direction. It was selected for several awards and is often listed as one of the greatest video games of all time. However, it was a commercial failure and contributed towards LucasArts’ decision to end adventure game development and the decline of the adventure game genre.
21/08/2026 Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom
Tower of Doom is an arcade game from 1993 created Capcom but with some involvement it would appear of Strategic Simulations Inc (SSI) as they also appear on the credits page. SSI was the first company to make video games based on D&D starting with Pool of Radiance in 1987 which I definitely played in my youth and I think finished, but have no evidences. They also made the very cool Panzer General series.
I played and finished Tower of Doom on my Pi Arcade on a single very enjoyable afternoon pumping large amounts of virtual quarters into it to continue after lots and lots of deaths. I could not imagine trying to play this one in a real money situation.
It is a very fun game, similar to Golden Axe but with more items and real D&D monsters like Kobolds, Gnolls, Owl bears, Skeletons, Troglodytes, and Hellhounds as fodder with big bosses being tougher baddies like an Ogre, Manticore, Displacer Beast, Black Dragon, Red Dragon, Mud Golem, a drow elf, and the head boss is a lich. There is apparently a beholder as well, but as the game allows you to make choices I did not go down the path that lead to it. I was not able to make too much use of the items as the jump key was also mapped to the select item key, so each time I jumped it would change the selected item, making it difficult to have the right thing ready at the right time. I played the Warrior, but maybe will fix the mapping issue and play again as the elf as she has a mix of fighting and spells.
Update the next day: with the help of Claude I got the buttons mapped! I had always tried to do it through RetroPie / RetroArch but he had me hit tab on the keyboard that brought up a MAME’s own menu which is much more straight forward and had the added benefit of auto saving the change, so now every time I start the game it has the buttons correctly matched! I then proceeded to play again as the Elf and took the long way instead of the shortcut through the Red Dragon’s mountain, and was rewarded with a beholder battle:
Screen shots:
Final screen:
A good guide with lots of details: PsychoBio’s Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom – Guide and Walkthrough
Thanks for reading and feel free to give feedback or comments via email (andrew@jupiterstation.net).