I recently acquired a copy of the gameBoom Street, for Nintendo Wii. Some players may know this game asFortune Street, orItadaki Street. It's a lot like Monopoly, but with a few twists added in.

WithBoom Street comes an easy mode and a tutorial which is actually in English, which is nice. In the easy mode, there's no stock market, and districts are replaced by bonuses when you get multiple shops next to each other. In the standard mode, there is a stock market, and the shops are grouped into districts like in Monopoly.

I've already played a few games of this, and met some familiar characters on the boards. So far, I've encountered Toad, Slime, Platypunk (newb), Princess Princessa, Kyril, Stella and a Japanese wi-fi player with a pet mimic. I've also returned to the Observatory fromDragon Quest IX for one of the games, which is nice.

At least three of those characters (including Princessa) have actually introduced themselves to me. :)

Currently, I'm engaged in a financial battle between me and the well-known Super Mario and his friend Yoshi, against Bowser junior. This particular battle is a good example of how the tide can change in a few turns, so you shouldn't give up just because people have a few more coins than you do!

Oh, and before I forget, I've done a bit of exploring in the free play area, and it turns out you can use other Miis as computer players too. Which means the Marcus Mates are going to be coming here too!

We are now training in a fourth vocation. I'm training as a sage and Marcus is training as a paladin.

George is training as a martial artist, which opens up some interesting abilities for us. He can raise his own tension, for example, so we can get him to super high tension in just two turns if we're lucky. Also, martial artists can use claws to great effect.

Jasmine is training as a ranger. Rangers, apparently, are very good with healing spells, up to Moreheal and Zing. They can also use bows and axes, and gain an ability called Mercy which lets weakened monsters run away, which isn't really useful except for that gigantes quest.

An interesting new ability of hers is the ability to use a few of her MP to make our team invisible. Previously we needed holy water for that, but now Jas can do it with MP.

Now that Marcus is a paladin, it's his turn to use a move that Jasmine had been using when she was a paladin, against pretty much any boss that he can get his coup de grâce on.It turns out that, particularly against Fowleye, if Jasmine or Marcus can get a Magic Mirror on themselves, they can just stand in front of everyone else bouncing all the boss's spells back at him. I've lost count of how much damage bosses have done to themselves that way :P

Metal slime hunting: a fair challenge, some excellent training.

Pretty much ever since I saw some videos on YouTube showing the legendary platinum king jewel, I've been out looking for them. And today... I finally found some!

For those non-seasoned-treasure-hunters out there, a metal slime is an uncommon monster that yields a very large amount of experience when defeated. However, there's a catch: fighting it isn't like fighting ordinary monsters:

• Most attacks only do 1 point of damage per hit. Metal Slash can do 2 points of damage. However, a well-placed critical attack like Thunder Thrust will wipe it out in one shot.
• It's difficult to hit a metal slime, due to their great agility.
• A metal slime only has a few HP.

A platinum king jewel is simply the fifth and highest rank of metal slime. However, it can only be found in some of the very highest-level treasure grottoes.

Another issue is their company: platinum king jewels are often accompanied by other things that can be very problematic. That's why Marcus is resuming his original role as priest, rather than training his thief skills at the moment.

One time we ran into an alphyn, and it wiped out the whole rest of the team and got Marcus down to 24 HP, and then ran out of mana, giving him enough time to run the hell away. Phew :)

By the way, I, as the team's leader, have been practicing a skill I call 'exing' a monster. I call it that because it involves the DS console's X button. The theory is that, when you're in the field menu, monsters can't attack you. So, while invisible (holy water), and a monster blocks the path, I stand there with my menu open and wait for it to pass me. The monster is exed, and we are free to proceed unscathed. (Of course, the monster is also unscathed, but that's not the point, is it?)

Oh, and that reminds me, I need to go and buy some more holy water...

Well, my quest to find a grotto with an S-ranked chest in it continues.

Recently, after I defeated Excalipurr, I encountered an as yet unusual problem. We seem to have reached the point where I have to start discarding old treasure maps, because I can't carry and register any more. (It maxxes out at 99.)

But just tossing out one of my less impressive maps isn't quite enough, is it? How about we have some fun, and conk the defeated boss in the head with it?!

* Andrio scrunches the map to the Copper Ruins of Woe Lv. 76 into a ball and throws it at Excalipurr's head!

BOOM! Headshot!

(Of course, this wasn't part of the game mechanics. It's just a little bit of fun I had.)

Endless Puyo POP Original

Score: 24510780p

Level: 99 + 49500p

Total Playing Time: 58:02 + 100000p

Highest Chain: 07 + 16000p

No. of all Clears: 00 + 0p

Final Score: 24679280p

If that isn't excellent, I don't know what is.

Warning: Possible spoilers follow.

I was exploring the Lanaryu Sand Sea the other day. There is a pretty epic roller-coaster-like mine cart track there. At the end of it there is one of those log stumps that you can sit on and heal yourself.

Spoilers end here.

I was down to about 22 HP out of 48 (that's five and a half hearts out of 12) so I decided to take a quick break. I then saw some monsters come out and try to ambush me.

That didn't exactly work, though, because Fi seemed to have an issue with my quick break. The funny thing is, when she started telling me off, she actually paused the game temporarily, but I was still able to heal myself whileshe was talking to me. Next thing the monsters knew, I was back to full health.

Fi win :D

I finally managed to find a wi-fi hotspot that worked with my Nintendo DS. You know what this means?

Well, there is apparently a lot of things in this game that you need to connect to wi-fi for, so I hurried back to the Quester's Rest to check it out. This time I managed to get in to DQVC successfully.

DQVC is an online shop within Dragon Quest IX. I have no idea what the letters DQVC stand for, but I do know that they were selling sainted soma, which I know is involved in the recipe for a goddess ring. I know this is found in very high-level grottoes which I haven't got yet, so I bought some from Sellma.

When I spoke to Erinn to get a reservation, she told me there was a 'special guest' staying at the hotel. It turns out that the special guest is Jessica Albert from Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King, who I've seenfeatured in a lot of YouTube videos.

I visited her room to say hi. and she gave me a spare dress that didn't fit her. I guess this means it's time to play dress-ups with Jasmine.

I also received a lot of new quests. I left there to play some online Mario Kart DS, but the hotspot went down.

I received a 25th anniversary copy of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Swordfor Christmas this year. It reminds me of Dragon Quest IX in several ways: firstly, one of the key places is in the sky. Secondly, a side quest seems to be similar to the Angel Falls quest.

The characters in Skyloft each have a guardian bird known as a Loftwing. All except for one: me. My bird was missing. This turned out to be a issue when Zelda pushed me off of Skyloft so that I could learn how to fly it.

* Warning: Spoilers follow.

So my first quest was to find out what happened to my Loftwing. I eventually found a character named Groose who was talking to hos gang about kidnapping a Crimson Loftwing (he didn't seem to notice me). When he saw me, he and his gang left.

It turns out that my Loftwing was in a cave that had monsters in it. Since I had no offensive abilities at that point, I had to go and borrow a sword from the sparring hall.

One of the best things about this game is probably the controls. The game uses a Wii Motion Plus, so that you can swing your Wii Remote almost as if it were the sword.

Most of the monsters montioned above were bats and slimes which were not difficult to deal with.

I ended up freeing my Loftwing just in time for the Wing Ceremony's race against Groose and a few others. Before then, however, Zelda and I had to do a repeat of her pushing me off Skyloft so I could learn the ropes. This went much better than Take 1 due to my having a Loftwing that time. :)

Halfway through the actual race, however, Groose started throwing eggs at me, even though this is a clear violation of the rule against interfering with other entrants. None of them hit me or my Loftwing, however, and I won the race. The winner of the race had to take part in the final part of the Wing Ceremony with Zelda, during which she gave me what is called a Sailcloth, then pushed me off the platform (again) so I could practice skydiving with it. I had to respawn a few times before I got it right on Take 3 :)

Shortly after that, Zelda and I were flying together, and then this big black tornado appeared in front of me. I managed to escaped unharmed, but Zelda... didn't. I didn't see what happened to her due to blacking out at that point.

When I came around in my bedroom, I saw a blue figure outside of my door. When I approached her, she moved away, leading me somewhere. Eventually we reached the statue of the goddess, where I was filled in about a 'quest' that was foretold long ago, and how Zelda and I were involved. I was also given a different sword, and an enterance into the surface world to start my quest to find Zelda...

It turns out that this blue figure is Fi, the spirit that resides in my sword. She has turned out to be veryhelpful to me on my quest.

There have been a lot of changes to this game since version 1.0.6.1. I decided to start up a new world to get all of the new features that were added.

No sooner had I finished my first house, than Tanner (my guide) pointed out to me that there was a Blood Moon out. I suppose it's a good thing it was just me and Tanner then. Not for long though. Soon I had Mortimer the merchant, Emily the nurse, Dolgrim the demolitionist, Terrell the arms dealer and Lunette the dryad (the Eye of Cthulhu also decided to pay me a visit. It started behaving very badly, attacking me and Tanner, so I had to give it the boot.)

There were two more Blood Moons in the first week, and almost none since then.

After defeating Skeletron, the clothier Nigel moved into my town too. He told me that he was having memories of 'tying up a woman and throwing her [into] a dungeon'. I went back to the dungeon to investigate (and see what I could pillage from it :)) Sure enough, I found said woman about halfway down the dungeon, bound in ropes. I untied her, and she tond me that her name was Shirlena, the mechanic.

Shirlena wasn't quite safe yet. I had some blocks with me, so I built a shelter for her so the Angry Bones wouldn't get her. This shelter is still there now, even though Shirlena has since moved into my house.

I have repeatedly heard that if you kill a new underworld boss called the Wall of Flesh, it will activate nwe 'challenges' for the world (the Hallow biome, lots of new, tougher monsters, and a wizard NPC). With a lot of potion buffs, I managed to breach the Wall on the second attempt, but it was a hard fight. A demonite brick box appeared in front of me, containing a Sharp Pwnhammer, and a Warrior Emblem that I keep as a kind of trophy.

Shortly after that, I went down into the underground Hallow to try and find Souls of Light, and fought wyverns on a newly built Sky Arena to get Souls of Flight (this was not easy!) to gain angel wings. Not only do the wings let me fly for a bit, they also let me fall more slowly andstop fall damage too.

I also found a goblin who had apparently been ditched by the invading army and thrown down my mine, and a bound wizard, who moved into my town too.

Then there was another Blood Moon. This was much more dangerous than the 3 previous Blood Moons because my town is larger and it's on hard mode (Wall of Flesh dead). My town got griefed by bomb-throwing clowns, and most of the population was wiped out, including the zombies and possessed armour. (A Pile of Undead Everything is a reference to TotalBiscuit's and Jesse Cox's YouTube series.)

When the 1.1.1 Christmas update came, the monsters started dropping present boxes, which contain candy cane blocks and snow globes. The snow globes can summon the Frost Legion, which is a horde of snowmen attacking my town and killing half of us again. They can't break doors though, which gives me an advantage.

Also, there is apparently a new snow biome, which I will have to generate a new world to get. Shortly after the Frost Legion invasion ended, Santa Claus visited my town. He was prepared to sell me a new vanity clothing set, but for the price of 75 gold, which is a bit too expensive just now.

I recently saw someone in a YouTube video using the ability Wave of Relief. In an attempt to find out how to get this ability, I returned to Gittingham Palace to find the next sage quest from that Supreme Sage book.

For this quest (Engaging the Sage) we were told to finish off the grotto boss Atlas with Zam. This would not be easy because Zam does about 100 points of damage, compared to 400 from a normal attack. As with similar quests, the first step is to find out how many HP Atlas has. After the first battle, I got the answer of 'between 5800 and 6300'. So we had to do about that much damage to him before spamming Zam.

At this point, George, Jasmine and I decided it would be easier to use Caster Sugar to make Zam do more damage, and Spooky Aura to make it do even more damage (spamming Spooky Aura didn't work). A few turns later, George's Zam spell knocked Atlas out.

Returning to Gittingham Palace, I was presented with a scroll called 'Sage's Scripture' which would allow one of us to use the ability Twocus Pocus, and let someone cast a spell twice in one turn. In practice, this turned out to be even better than it sounded:

• It can be used on anyone on the team, even someone other than the user. This means I can just give Jasmine the scroll because she has the most MP. Now each of us has one scroll :)
• The second cast does not use MP.
• If it is used with a single-target damage spell like Kafrizzle, the second cast does at least 20% more damage. This allows Jasmine, as a level 99 mage, can do 800 points of damage in one turn to some enemies, enough to kill a slugly betsy.
• It also works for healing spells, buff spells, and debuff spells. Marcus, as a priest, can now fully heal all of us in one turn with only 16 MP, fully heal any one of us with 4 MP, greatly raise one of our defense in one turn and increase the success chance of Zing and Whack by 50%.

With this power, we managed to take down Baramos (at level 1) in six turns, down from a previous record of 10.