It’s my birthday, but *I* get the presents!

I get e-mails from online stores always saying it’s their anniversary or birthday or whatever, but they want to give us presents, which usually entails sending them money.

But hey, I’m not going to do that to you. This time I’m keeping the presents, and you don’t have to pay me anything.

What a deal, right?

I was going to use that picture above as the header image, but I thought that people would think that what I got for my birthday was a video game. Well, I did get video games, but not that one, so let’s start with those and then we’ll get to that.

Galaga and Galaxian (Gameboy)

While we were out in Ohio for Origins, I bought a little handheld game in MicroCenter that played three games I really loved back in the arcade — Xevious, Galaxian and Galaga.

So during boring meetings when I am working at home, sometimes I just reach up, grab the game, and just start playing it. I’m getting good at Galaga. If I’d been able to practice like this, for free, back in the 80s, I’d be an arcade legend. But, alas, I didn’t have that many quarters.

While my BF was in Long Island on a business trip, he picked up this Gameboy dual cartridge with both Galaga and Galaxian on it. I plugged it into my Analogue Pocket and immediately racked up a high score.

Yes. At long last. I am the mistress of the arcades.

Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem (SNES/SFC)

I got the very first game in the Fire Emblem series, in Japanese for the Famicom, while I was in Ohio. For my birthday, Kasul got me the first two games in the series for the Super Famicom in one cartridge. These were never released outside Japan, but fans translated both games into English so that they can be played by those for whom Japanese is a struggle.

Obviously not an official release. I popped it in the Analogue NT+ and it came right up with the music and opening video. I can’t wait to play these.

HeroQuest: Jungles of Delthrak

We played through the core HeroQuest campaign over a period of months not long ago and we had a lot of fun with it. I’ve been buying expansions, especially those that contain new characters, but I hadn’t heard of the Jungles of Delthrak expansion.

It looks gorgeous; it has dinosaurs and… well, it had dinosaurs. We went through the entire Jurassic World campaign not being able to kill the dinosaurs, but we will have our revenge.

I love my Tallneck. Ever since I put it together, though, I’ve wanted more. The Tallneck is the only Horizon Zero Dawn model LEGO has made so far, but fans have put together build-your-own kits for a bunch of the more iconic Horizon robot monsters.

Chief among them is the Thunderjaw.

Kasul downloaded a fan build for the Thunderjaw, then sourced each individual piece — seventeen hundred of them — bagged them up in the order they will be used, and put them in a box along with a thumb drive with the build instructions. There’s 355 steps involved, but I’m ready, my body is ready, let’s do this.

The one question is how I will be able to light it up. Third parties sold a variety of lighting kits for the official LEGO Tallneck, but I couldn’t find any for this fan build (although it is a very popular build). Plan is to go ahead and put it together, then try to see what sorts of lights we can get into it. I’m sure Reddit will be able to help; there’s a bunch of diehard fanatic master builder Horizon Zero Dawn fans who’ve probably either done it or knows who has. And if that fails, I happen to personally know a LEGO Twitcher, and maybe he has some ideas.