April ‘25
Luke's Phinds
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Luke's Phinds -
This month's pickups were all acquired at the Midwest Gaming Classic in Milwaukee. If you’re into collecting video games like I am, this event is for you. Whether it’s Atari or Nintendo 3ds, there's a good chance you’ll find the game that you’re looking for. It was hard for me not to walk away with a backpack full of games, as it seemed like every booth I went to had a game I wanted to add to the collection. Read about several of those pick ups below!
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 (PS2)
After debating for many hours over a facetime call one evening, we (the Philbin bros) finally came to an agreement on something…. The greatest decade of all time is the early 00s!
While I won’t be getting into how we came to this conclusion, (that will be coming in a whole separate article, maybe podcast?) I do want to briefly talk about something that was at its peak in popularity during this decade, skateboarding. It seemed like if you were a kid who grew up in the early 00s, you either attempted to learn to skate, or you owned a pair of chunky Etnis skate shoes. I know for my friend group and I, we spent most of our summer breaks at the local skate park. When we weren’t skating, we were probably watching skate videos on the Berrics, or tech decking (maybe that was just me).
There was also the long list of killer skateboarding games released during this decade, with some of my personal favorites like Skate 1 + 2, and Tony Hawk’s Underground. The level designs, gameplay, and soundtracks from these games are flawless. While there have certainly been some good skate games released since the early 00s (Session being one of those), they don’t get anywhere close to being as good to the classics of the early 00s.
THPS 4 is one of those awesome skateboarding video games released during this goated decade. It’s a Tony Hawk game, so you know it’s going to be a lot of fun. What’s cool though is that there are some fun new gameplay additions like spine transfers, and skithcing. Spine transfers are great because, depending on where your pull these off, they can help extend your combos, and can even help gain access to different areas of the map. While skitching is more of a situation trick, it’s a ton of fun to pull off, and captures the rebellious nature of skate boarding. Lastly, we also have some great new maps to shred. My two favorites were the Alcatraz, and College levels.
If you don’t have a PS2 to play this one, no worries! There’s a THPS 3 +4 remake being released this year. The 1 + 2 remake was really well made, so I’m pumped for this upcoming remake.
Street Hoops (PS2)
I’ve recently made it a goal of mine to collect every single basketball game released on the PS2. Why? Well, the biggest reason has to be price, they’re cheap! In a world where retro game collecting has become incredibly expensive, it’s refreshing to buy games in the $10-$15 range like the old days. Not only are they cheap, they’re also incredibly is easy to find in the wild. For example, I’ve come across tons of PS2 bball games at Goodwill, flea markets, and garage sales. There’s a small adrenaline rush I get whenever I find one of these games out in the wild rather than going the eBay or Facebook market route.
One other reason why I want to collect this genre of games are the old rosters. It’s like a mini time capsule to an era where PFs played like PFs, and it wasn’t all 3 pointers and layups. I weirdly have more fun going through, analyzing all the depth charts and free agents than actually playing the games sometimes. There might be something wrong with me…
The biggest hurdle with this collection though has to be the high volume of games I’ll need to collect. For example, there are the NBA Lives, NBA 2Ks, College bball games, as well as the iconic NBA Street games. Just these titles alone, that’s about 15+ games right there. That’s not all though, there’s also a bunch of lesser known titles that I’ll need to collect, like Street Hoops for instance.
I think we’ve all played or heard about NBA Live and 2k, but I don’t think I’ve never heard anyone mention or discuss Street Hoops before. After playing it for a bit, I can see why.
This is a basketball game with no official NBA license, so instead the tried to capitalize on the flashy And-1/ mixtape era of the early 00s. Think baggy clothes, ankle breakers, and a ton of travels. There are even have a few playable street ball icons like Hot Sauce and ½ man ½ amazing. Unfortunately, outside of a few street ball legends, the rest of the roster is made up of generic looking street ballers. Similarly to the bland roster, I found the rest of the game to be a bit dull. Street basketball is well known for it’s flashiness and charisma. Unfortunately, this game does not capture that vibe well at all. It does have creative dribble moves and big poster dunks, but it looks and feel pretty stiff. Street Hoops feels like a standard basketball game, but with some ankle breaking moves added in. It also does not help that the color pallet is brown, and grey. The whole experience is just a bit boring.
If you want a more fun street ball experience on the PS2, stick with NBA Street or one of the Ballers game. These do a much better job at making street basketball look cool, and have great gameplay to back it up.
Dragon Quest XI S Echoes of an Elusive Age (pS4)
Even though I have already played through this title on the Switch, I’m glad to now own this on PS4 as well. While the Switch port was solid, the frame rate and resolution was a bit of an issue, and even distracting at times. Sure, the ability to take it on the go is great, but the PS4 version looks and runs way smoother than it’s Switch counterpart. Additionally, since it’s on Playstation, it has trophies! I recently got hit with the trophy collecting bug after achieving the platinum trophy in Bomb Rush Cyberfunk on PS5. DQXI is a super long game though (60+hours), so we’ll see if I have the attention span to achieve it. Regardless, still will be good to play through a bit and unlock some trophies along the way.
I know this site is typically centered around sports, but if you enjoy classic turn-based RPGs, this is one of the best I’ve played in recent years. It feels like a throwback RPG from the SNES era, but with modern improvements that help the game feel less grind-y and slow like many older titles in this genre. Plus, the music and visuals give off a this cozy vibe that makes the game a relaxing play through. Oh, and you can even play the game entirely in a 2D pixel mode if that’s what you prefer. I highly recommend this to anyone who wants a more chill game to play that you can slowly chip away at over a long period of time.
