Buy low, sell high, and make bank with Market Crashers

Remember when I beat Crimson Shroud some time back and opened up a ton of free space on my Nintendo 3DS? No? Well, click here to read more about that and then come back so, sequentially, you are following along with this story. It might help. Right. Well, with all that free space prime for the filling, I went and downloaded a bunch of other things, such as updates to Pokémon Shuffle and that freemium Pokémon Picross thing, which I’ve kind of only touched twice since and not for very long. Aside from those, I also grabbed a free new StreetPass mini-game from Nintendo as part of their promotion of a whole bunch of new StreetPass mini-games, deciding between Slot Car Rivals, a racing game, and Market Crashers, a business simulation game. You can figure out which one I picked.

Ultimately, Market Crashers is a fast-paced decision-making game. You know how in those Telltale games like The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones you only have so long to reply to someone before the scene moves forward? It’s all that. Except money is at stake instead of someone’s friendship or, as it often happens, their life. Anyways, you are a new day trader to the market scene, and so you’ll need the help of analysts to ensure you are making the best estimations of the market. This is where the StreetPassing comes in, as each person you connect with will help show a stronger forecast of how the market will play out. That way you know when to buy low and sell high or hold back. Or, if you are like me, buy one share and then immediately freeze up from a panic attack over not wanting to mess up, ironically messing up nonetheless.

You can buy up to ten shares at a time from fictitious companies like Piece-By-Piece Deliveries and Kingfinder Studios. Purchasing a share is as easy as hitting a button; in fact, that’s what you do–the A button buys shares and the Y button sells. As time trudges forward, an analyst might say that there is big news, and this could either be a big drop or rise. The short goal for Market Crashers is to do well and earn money, using those StreetPassed Miis to the best of their ability, and the longer goal is to earn a massive amount of money, with the first flag being $10 million. Hmm. In the two sessions I played, I earned money, and then I lost money, so that longer goal might forever be a longer goal for me.

Stocks are definitely not my thing, both in real life and, now I can confirm, in videogame form. Watching line graphs grow and change isn’t all that exciting, and knowing that an investment is behind those ups and downs is more than enough to stress me out greatly. Then there’s also the requirement of making rapid-fire decisions to get things done. Um, no. I’m not good at that. I’m a thinker, a muller (not to be confused with a mullet), a man of wonder, and I’m always one hundred percent too afraid to instantly commit to something in the matter of a few seconds. Chances are, that never works out great for me. I’d rather assess the scenario, really study it, and then dive in. In the end, I’d make a better analyst than day trader.

I don’t know. Maybe I should have gone with that little car racing game. It’s too late now to go back, and I don’t expect to hit many more areas with lots of people carrying their Nintendo 3DS around–thanks, MICE 2016!–so I’ll just stick with collecting puzzle pieces and earning new hats via multiple playthroughs of Find Mii 2.

Once more, off to MegaCon to StreetPass like woah

It’s been a year, and so I’m off yet again to attend MegaCon 2013 in Orlando, FL, this upcoming weekend. I’ll be there with my wife Tara Abbamondi at Table Red 1 in the Artists Alley, selling comics, looking all shy, and quietly StreetPassing with my 3DS safely in my pocket. If you are going to the show, please do swing by our table and say hi; I’ll be the one with the beard.

Now, last year, I was able to StreetPass 168 times. That’s a lot for three or four days of non-stop comic convention action. Especially when I am behind a table for most of it. Seriously, it seemed like I couldn’t clear out my gate fast enough before one or two more Miis popped up, ready to give me a puzzle piece and help swing a sword in Find Mii 2. That said, given how the handheld system has grown since February 2012, I think I can do even better. Maybe over 200 tags. Maybe…250. Who knows.

As always, I’m looking to complete more puzzle murals, with maybe seven or eight still to go. I also recently found a retail copy of Fire Emblem: Awakening and have played maybe thirty or so minutes of it, but hopefully that’s enough to have unlocked its StreetPassing features, and so I’m hoping to gain some new comrades. I think I’m full for Super Mario 3D Land, with three present boxes awaiting my return, but I could always use more of those. What other games use StreetPass? Hmm, Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy does, though I don’t remember what one trades. Favorite song and a profile card? Shame Paper Mario: Sticker Star doesn’t–at least not that I’m aware of–as it would be really easy to just gather some super strong, shiny stickers from those you pass. In short, give me lots of stuff.

Anyways, place your bets below in the comments on how many StreetPass tags you think I’ll obtain at MegaCon this year. I offered the prize last year of a “blog topic of choice,” which I don’t Tara ever cashed in, but let’s go with that again. If you are the closest, without going over, I’ll write about whatever you want. Even if I don’t know much about the topic, like Call of Duty multiplayer loadouts or how to mix that special potion in Atelier Ayesha: The Alchemist of Dusk. Really, the choice is yours, so guess away.

And see you when I return! I guess those blog posts on my progress in Paper Mario: Sticker Star and overall thoughts on Hector: Badge of Carnage will just have to wait…

2012 Game Review Haiku, #13 – Find Mii 2

Royal fam is gone
Hire cats and tag friends to
Save them at MoCCA

–

For all the games I complete in 2012, instead of wasting time writing a review made up of points and thoughts I’ve probably already expressed here in various posts at Grinding Down, I’m instead just going to write a haiku about it. So there.

The chase is on in Super Mario 3D Land

In the beginning of my Nintendo 3DS days, I kept the thing on and in my pocket as much as possible, both to earn as many Play Coins as possible and in hopes of connecting with another person’s system. That dedication eventually waned, but every now and then–like when Tara and I head out to the mall area or go grocery shopping–I remember to flip it on and bring it with me. I mean, a year and change later, the chances of StreetPassing someone else is at least a smidgen greater. And with luck, I have connected with a few people in Target and Weis and the surrounding area, and a few of them have been kind enough to give me Question Mark levels in Super Mario 3D Land. That’s-a-nice.

The problem though is that I haven’t played any more Super Mario 3D Land since I beat it, as I needed a break from 3D platforming and wasn’t ready to tackle yet another eight worlds full of coins, flying Goombas, and tricky jumps. The cartridge has since been in my travel case while I whittle away at Professor Layton’s London Life. But I noticed the other day that I had two out of an allotted three Question Mark levels and wanted to clear out my backlog in preparation for MoCCA Festival this weekend. So I popped the cartridge back in, completed the two bonus levels super fast–winning both coins, of course–and decided to see what some of the Special World levels were like.

Special World 1-1 is par for the course, but does introduce the silver-colored Tanooki Suit, which finally allows the player to turn into a statue. Not that I ever really do, but I think I need the ability to hit certain triggers so I’ll keep an eye out. But it’s Special World 1-2 that gets this blog post’s glory. In it, Mario is chased all the way to the flagpole by a Cosmic Clone. And when I say chased, I mean chased. This isn’t no Boo slowly trailing after you; it’s a hot-blooded pursuit, and it’s pretty much the most tense Mario level ever. The crazy remixed Mario tunes don’t help either, and I totally missed all three stars as my only goal was getting the bleep away from this crazy, yellow-eyed demonic doppelgänger and reaching safety.

After that stressful level, I went back to earlier levels to find more Star Coins, as I will constantly need more to unlock the castles in the Special Worlds. And those levels are much simpler and easier on my fingers. I know there are a few more containing Cosmic Clones, and I am not looking forward to them. Maybe if I get enough Star Coins I can skip right by them, kind of like how I got enough Gold medals in the skill games for Trials Evolution to avoid perfecting the really hard and/or extreme tracks. Yeah, that’s the key: avoidance.

So, if you’re in New York City this weekend, swing by MoCCA Festival and StreetPass me some Question Block levels so I don’t have to be chased ever again. My heart and legs thank you in advance.

MegaCon and the 3DS StreetPass tagging total

I’m back, dear Grinding Down readers. Thanks for waiting on me. For those that didn’t even realize I was gone, well…you stink. I was down in sunny Florida for some days there, selling minicomics and eating at places with nifty names like Tijuana Flats and Which Wich. It was a nice time save for all the driving. Actually, the driving down was fine. It was the return trip home that was grueling.

Now, only two people participated in my little contest where you could guess how many StreetPass tags I’d get at a three-day, very popular comics convention. One was my wife, the other a good online friend. Shame on the rest of you for not participating, as you have now missed the chance to hold total power over me for one entire blog post. Anyways, here is their guesses:

• Tara Abbamondi: 114
• Greg Noe: 256

Well, last night, with a fat cat sleeping on my back, I took the time to count up all of my StreetPass tags from the weekend, and the total is pretty surprising. Ready for it? Ready?

168 StreetPass tags

Woo. Ba-boom. So, that means Tara wins, and she’ll let me know what she wants me to moan and groan and go on about at length when she’s ready. Hopefully it’s not Sailor Moon.

But man, 168 tags in a three-day span does some magical things for one’s Mii Plaza and the minigames found within. One, I was able to complete five more puzzles, as well as collect all of the tag-only puzzle pieces. I’ll probably be able to finish up the remaining puzzles in April at MoCCA; I don’t like using my Play Coins to buy puzzle pieces, as it’s more fun to collect them from other 3DS owners. Two, I filled out my map a little more, meeting people from all along the East Coast, as well as someone from Anguilla, which is so rare that it doesn’t even get a picture for it. Third, made some sick progress in Find Mii II, getting all the way to the final boss, and by final boss I mean the boss after what many probably assume is the final boss. Still chipping away at it as that level-down gas is no fun at all. Then I get to replay it all over again, choosing a different path from before to get more hats. MOAR HATZ.

But getting all these tags and grabbing new puzzle pieces was great for filling in the gaps at MegaCon when nobody was stopping by our table. Aw, sad faces. Really, that was only on Friday and late Sunday. Saturday was slammed with busy, busy, busy. Sometimes I was actually clearing out my Plaza Gate under the table, because if you got ten Miis in there you couldn’t collect anymore visitors–and I needed to collect as many as humanly possible.

The next big tagging event will be at the end of April for MoCCA Festival in New York City. I’ll hold another guessing contest around then, and hopefully more of y’all will play along. Gotta think of a bigger prize. Maybe I’ll offer up my pristine copy of Suikoden II? Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

Grinding Down on pause while I hide from furry cosplayers at MegaCon 2012

Tomorrow, Tara and I leave behind the cold, gray skies of Pennsylvania for hopefully something warmer in Florida. We’ll be at MegaCon 2012 from this upcoming Friday through Sunday, selling comics, being shy, and staring at cosplayers. You can find us at table RED 9, wherever that is. Just look for a fat bearded man and a small, attractive redhead–that’s us.

Let me give a quick rundown of what we’ll be shilling. Tara reprinted her girl-falls-into-a-puddle minicomic Puddles, has a new mini based on another song by Leema Mountain, has copies of Unite and Take Over, and some awesome prints based on those popular Game of Thrones peeps; you can see some previews here. On the other hand, I will be selling copies of my 31 Bad Comics challenges, the first issue of a new story called The Lost Seafarer, and some Supertown things. Also got some fancy postcards for All of Westeros to give out. You want more deets? Go here.

What does all this have to do with videogames and Grinding Down? Well, uh. I won’t have time to blog. I won’t have time to write up more delicious words about 100%ing Saints Row: The Third or playing the same exact character in Skyrim on the Xbox 360 and Steam or my early thoughts on the recently acquired Super Mario 3D Land. I won’t be able to do Achievements of the Week this time around. It’ll just have to wait for my grand return. Hope that’s okay.

But let’s play a game while I’m away. Wait. ::puts on Jigsaw voice:: I WANT TO PLAY A GAME WITH YOU. AND THAT GAME IS CALLED:

GUESS THE NUMBER OF STREETPASS TAGS I’LL GET AT MEGACON 2012!

Catchy, huh? See, MegaCon is looking to be a pretty popular convention, and where there’s a popular convention, there’s the chance to score a good number of StreetPass tags for my Nintendo 3DS. For comparison, I got 51 tags back in April 2011 at MoCCA, but that was also early into the system’s life; with the price drop and array of good games, I feel like the chance of someone else having a 3DS is much higher now.

Whoever comes close to the exact number without going over will win a prize. What’s the prize? Geez, really? You have to ask? Okay, okay. The prize is that you can pick a topic–any topic you want though try not to creep me out–and I’ll write about it. Look, I’m not made of money. Take it or leave it.

Place your bets below, and I’ll see y’all when I return!

Games Completed in 2011, #22 – Find Mii

This Nintendo 3DS minigame actually required a good amount of time and attention, and so it’s making the list as a completed title for 2011. DLC and minigames, huh? At this rate, I’m going to start considering things like “waking up” and “eating a yummy lunch” to be completed games, and before you know it we’ll be in the triple digits. Looking forward to that, as well as hitting twenty-five completed titles as I can then buy L.A. Noire guilt-free, and the timing on that is most likely going to perfectly align with an upcoming vacation. Mmm…

Anyways, Find Mii. It’s one of two minigames found within the StreetPass Mii Plaza, and it’s basically a tiny, simple RPG with a small level of strategy to it. Your Mii–the version that looks like you and that you send out to other 3DS systems to hang out, that is–is captured by a mysterious monster and locked in a cage. To free him or her, you’ll need to either hire cat/dog heroes (depending on your preferences) or tag other 3DS punks and use their Miis to fight off ghosts, open treasure chests, and progress through a multi-room dungeon. A basic RPG, wherein the color of the Miis and heroes you use determines their magic ability; some spells work better on specific ghosts, and there’s one dungeon room that simply won’t let you do anything unless you have somebody in a white shirt.

Strategy involves knowing how to attack ghosts in a certain order or with a specific spell up front. Let me say that Poison (purple shirts) and Invigorate (orange shirts) are great and should be used first to get the most out of them. Sometimes a ghost will have a colored shield, and the only way to break through is to attack with a same colored hero; sounds easy enough, but the heroes you purchase are random, and who can ever predict what color shirt another 3DS owner’s Mii will be wearing. It’s a lot of luck first, strategy second.

For the longest time, I was spending Play Coins to hire a few kitty cats to fight for me, which meant very slow progress. It wasn’t until MoCCA 2011 that I started to tag people like crazy and was able to get through a huge chunk of the dungeon; the final end boss, however, required constant hero-purchasing, but eventually I was successful in saving, uh, myself, and then there was some end credits and the option to play again to find even more hats for my Mii to wear. I wish I had saved my final end-game stats, but alas, nope. I’d guesstimate that I used somewhere around 150+ heroes to beat Find Mii for the first time.

Here’s a checklist of the hats I’ve unlocked so far:

• Mario Hat (Earned from clearing Room 01)
• Luigi Hat (Earned from clearing Room 01 on your second trip through the game.)
• Toad Hat (Earned from clearing Room 10 on your second trip through the game.)
• Bowser Hat (Earned from clearing Room 08 on your second trip through the game.)
• Red Pikmin Hat (Earned from clearing Room 06)
• Blue Pikmin Hat (Earned from clearing Room 04 on your second trip through the game.)
• Yellow Pikmin Hat (Earned from clearing Room 11 on your second trip through the game.)
• Link Hat (Earned from clearing Room 08)
• Samus Hat (Earned from clearing Room 12)
• Metroid Hat (Earned from clearing Room 12 on your second trip through the game.)
• Kirby Hat (Earned from clearing Room 07)
• Cat Hat (Earned from clearing Room 04)
• Dog Hat (Earned from clearing Room 09)
• Bunny Hat (Earned from clearing Room 06 on your second trip through the game.)
• Crown (Earned from clearing Room 13)
• Ultimate Hat (Earned from clearing Room 13 on your second trip through the game.)

Of all of ’em, I enjoy the crown, mostly because I got used to seeing my Mii wearing it while stuck inside a cramped cage. See:

For being free, Find Mii a fine little distraction, something to do every now and then when you notice you have a tag or abundance of Play Coins, but once all the hats are collected, that’ll be it. Maybe via system updates, Nintendo can include new dungeons (and hats!), as well as new puzzles to collect pieces for. Doesn’t seem like a hard thing to do. Plus, I have like 150+ Play Coins just sitting there, collecting (3D)e-dust, waiting to be spent. Let’s keep this going, okay?

A weekend full of StreetPass tags

Over the weekend, I attended and exhibited at MoCCA in New York City, a fun comics convention that is brimming with indie art titles and nice people. Also, tons of 3DS owners. How do I know this? Well, for two days, I kept my 3DS on Sleep Mode in my front pocket, ready to tag other traveling systems, and when it was all said and done, after giving in to pure obsession and checking again and again, I went from having one dude in my Mii Plaza to having 51 Mii peeps. Let me embiggen that number for you:

51

That’s a lot of tags. I even got lucky and ended up tagging several Miis multiple times, increasing their level each time. Sometimes, as I was checking who I had tagged, I’d tag two to three more people walking by. It was amazing and overwhelming and a little bit like drug use in that seeing that green light at the top corner of my 3DS sent a rush of tingles through my body each and every time.

With all these tags, I was able to get much farther in Find Mii, the built-in RPG for the 3DS, unlocking several more hats like Link’s Hat, the Kirby Hat, and Dog Ears. Still haven’t rescued my own Mii, but we’re creeping closer; got hung up on a shielded ghost, and nobody I tagged seemed to like the color light blue. There was also some puzzle piece swapping, but that function is ultimately uninteresting. You collect puzzle pieces, and your reward for finding them all is…you get to look at a picture! Oh joy. I completed an image of Link and a bunch of Pikmin if you were curious.

Here’s a tidbit to chew on: roughly 90% of all tags over the weekend were from male 3DS owners, and it seemed like the title of choice was Super Street Fighter IV 3D. I disappointed another exhibitor when I told him I had bought Pilotwings Resort instead.

But now with all this tagging done and an army of Miis at my control, I have to wonder what’s next. I mean, they just kind of stand around. Are they going to be added to any future 3DS games I play that use Miis? I wish there was more to do with them, with tagging, with communicating. Why can’t I simply add some of these people to my friends list since we’ve tagged each other? StreetPass is all about the short-term satisfaction, and it’s great at it, but there’s not much meat to it in the end.

The only bummer to all this crazy excitement is that I sort of burned myself out on the 3DS and have not carried it with me now for the past two days. I’ll get back to it though as I’m looking to increase the amount of walking I do now that the weather is turning, but there’s no longer any real incentive now that I’ve seen what a good amount of tags amount to: some quick entertainment, nothing more.

My first StreetPass tag notification in all its glory

I got my first StreetPass tag almost a week exactly after I purchased my Nintendo 3DS. Like, I bought my system two Sundays ago around 5:00 P.M., and this last Sunday I passed someone else with their system on around 4:00 P.M.-ish. How freaking weird is that? I had almost given up hope of ever tagging anybody, too.

Anyways, his name is Dominic, and he was definitely at the Rockaway Mall on April 3, 2011, doing some spring shopping. His birthday was pretty recent on March 2, and his dream is “…to master an art!” Sadly, his favorite game title is, um, activity log. I immediately used him to spice up the two minigames within the Mii Plaza: Puzzle Swap and Find Mii. Sadly, he didn’t have a puzzle piece to share, but I did have him take some sword swings at ghosts. He’s now hanging out in my Mii Plaza, looking lonely, looking bored. I guess that’s all these Mii tags are good for–a one-time use.

I’m very curious to see if my system gets any more love while I’m in New York City over the weekend. I’ll be selling Supertown comics at MoCCA 2011, as well as walking around the city a wee bit. If I really come back completely StreetPass-empty, I’m gonna give up on the function entirely. I can earn my 10 Play Coins easily enough by the lunch hour, and after that then there’s no reason to be constantly carrying it with me.

Have you gotten your first StreetPass tag yet?

Zero StreetPass tags for me, and zero StreetPass tags for you

Like many others, I bought my Nintendo 3DS the day it launched. In hindsight, we all should have done something else that day–stayed inside the store to set up our systems and StreetPass one another. Because, alas, it’s most likely not going to happen on its own, unless we’re at PAX or plan meet-ups like a bunch of overaged weirdos.

You can read about my first day of walking around with my 3DS by clicking this very sentence. The next three days are very similar to it. A lot of checking, a lot of nothing to check. I’m trying to make a point of keeping my 3DS on in Sleep Mode at every instance because one never knows when I might tag another 3DS owner. In Quick Chek? Maybe. The gas station? Could be. In my bathroom? Time will certainly tell.

I’ve yet to get my first StreetPass tag notification. Stephen Totilo from Kotaku, who lives–mind you–in New York City, only just got his first recently, and from the most unlikeliest of places. It’s definitely something worth celebrating because they’re going to be few and far between as the days go on. I assumed that since stock in my small hometown sold out on Day One that I’d be in reach of someone else that had a 3DS, but it seems that I’ve been deceived.

If you own a 3DS, it is now your duty to carry it around in Sleep Mode, ready for tagging. Your duty as a gamer. And also because I’m sick of hiring cats with swords to try and save my kidnapped Mii and want your help.

I’ll be in NYC myself pretty soon, and if I come back with a completely empty Mii plaza, I’m going to give up on the function entirely. It sounds promising, but it still lacks integration and a wider net.