Completed: Super Mario 3D World

Technically had this beaten awhile ago but I did not want to count it until we had all the stars and stamps collected + every level completed. I know this isn't technically 100% what with all the flags but I do NOT care. Had so much fun playing and completing this and made even more fun doing it all together with B! Would love if they made another 3d Mario like this and 3D Land. There is nothing quite like a Nintendo-developed platformer.

Hell yeah: Wildly creative, incredible amounts of polish, great soundtrack (with nice throwbacks to Galaxy), seemingly endless amount of levels

Fuckin'ell: Champion's Road may be the hardest Mario level I've ever played

A look to 20 years ago

Every now and then I like to look at old issues of EGM, my favorite magazine and dare I say the  preeminent gaming mag at the time, and see what I would have been reading around this time, say 20 years ago. Since subscribers typically got a copy two months early, it would have been the September 2003 issue 170, which lines up since the cover story is an extensive Soul Calibur 2 review which was released July 5th.

Thankfully most of these are all archived in various places so I can take a trip back to a time when advertisements like this were commonplace.

Issue here: https://archive.org/details/electronic-gaming-monthly-issue-170-september-2003_20210611/mode/2up