Nice try

Welp, I studied the ad closely... and then moved on to the one about the toughest games.  Ba-BOOM!  Drumroll please...  Oh, right, the World's Hardest Game.  Well, we all know the world's hardest game is "Rock, Paper, Crashing the International Monetary System" but sure, the second hardest one is this one to the left.  Quite simple, really.  Three colors, three rooms, four blue dots.  Well, first of all, the red is ALREADY in the green, so boom!  It's over.  Busted.  But okay, the grass is always greener, so let's try to get past the blue dots to the other patch of green.  But wait!  The spaces in between the dots is too small!  Our red square cannot pass without assistance.  Here's my only question: do they take Visa?

Atari emulator -> Arex

I used to play this one a lot with an actual Atari computer... for some reason, I seem to recall flipping the score twice!  When did I have all that free time?  Maybe I left the computer on overnight or something.  In order to do that, by my hasty calculations... why, you'd have to get to level 241 to do that!  Well, I guess I found such endeavours less boring back then.  Nowadays, I'm in a rush, more or less... but God bless the geniuses who created the ability to save the game state.  Now I always make sure to restart whenever I lose a life.
Anyway, I tried organizing the levels by theme; a little pointless, arguably.  There are some thematic similarities, some that are completely out there.  That level 31 reminds me of that one challenging room in that Montezuma's Revenge, Part 1 game.

Atari emulator -> Fortune Hunter

I'm just a sucker for tempests in a teapot like Romox's "Fortune Hunter"... then again, I'm also relieved I didn't spend $39.95 for it back in the day thirty years ago.  For those of you who want to know what computer speed was like back then, this is a great example.  Graphics 7 was a particularly slow mode.  Sure, not as slow as 8, but still.  This kinda reminds me of "Temple of Apshai", the one that you had to run in Basic, and not "Gateway to Apshai," which was larger in scope by far.  The closest thing we had to Doom for the Atari was "Encounter" by Synapse Software.  Not as violent, anyhow.

Another one

And the tits just keep on coming... hits!  I mean hits.  First of all... they can't use the name "Under Siege"!  There's only one Under Siege, God damn it... oh, right, there's a second one too.  And second... she's supposed to be a damsel in distress, right?  She don't look very distressed! ..are they trying to get some kind of freaky three-way going, like Stephen Colbert's always talking about?

General War: Memories

Mostly the happy memories, apparently......................

Megalegs (Atari emulator and non)

Ah, Megalegs by Megasoft.  Wonder whatever happened to Megasoft?  Guess their lawyers weren't as good as Microsoft.  Ah, Microsoft.  Reminds me of that David Letterman joke in one of his top 10 lists.  I believe it was Top 10 Bill Gates pickup lines.  Number one, of course, was "It's not micro, and it's not soft."  Good ol' creepy, undersexed Uncle Dave.  Anyway, back to the game proper.
When you play one of the classic games with the three lives paradigm, like Centipede or Pac-Man, is it just me or do you ever notice that you seem to do well on the first life, then really blow it on the second and third lives?  Man, does that seem to happen to me a lot.  Of course, with Megalegs, it's way way harder to get to those extra lives unlike on Centipede or Millipede.  There's a totally different points structure in Megalegs.  Things are worth a lot fewer points, to say the least.  For example, with Centipede, you can shoot twelve scorpions and boom!  Extra life.  Of course, in Megalegs, there are turtles instead of scorpions, and I believe they are worth 150 points a pop.  Now, if I've done my math correctly, that's... 66.66667 turtles!  How do you get a fraction of a turtle?  Doesn't make any sense!  They do poison only half of the mushroom sometimes, on the other hand.
Other differences: the fleas fall pretty much nonstop in Megalegs.  Sometimes in Centipede, they let up, don't they?  Unless it's the Atari 8-bit version of Centipede, of course.  Fleas are only worth 25 points, so again, you've got your work cut out for you.  Now, as in Centipede, the fleas lay the occasional new mushroom.  Let's just skip that extra chapter of the book on the Birds and the Bees for now.  Here's another difference from Centipede and definitely Millipede: if the fleas reach the maximum number of mushrooms on the screen, they stop... kinda creepy, dontcha think?  The playing field has now become a bar with a maximum occupancy!  Why didn't we listen to the Luddites?
One other difference between Megalegs and Centipede is that, once the megalegs hits the bottom of the screen, nothing happens.  In Centipede, new centipede heads start appearing from offscreen.  They spared us the indignity of that extra burden in Megalegs.  Kinda neat!
Then, of course, there's the spiders.  Reminds me of having to do the jump rope in grade school.  You gotta time it just right when you jump into the Ellipsoid of Death.  Never did get good at that.  Of course, the "spiders" in Megalegs have much more predictable movements.  And yet, they still get me a lot.  I guess my fate in life is to fall prey to one psychopath or sociopath or another.  Maybe the video games help stave off that fate.  I know that video games are going to be cruel to me, but I can at least control the extent of the cruelty sometimes!
Now, if I were a really smart player, I'd just stay on level 1 and shoot everything while it's nice and slow, but I just can't operate that way.  Can't.  Can't do it.  I need progress.  Which brings us to the sound effects of Megalegs.  I never really thought about it before, but there's no crunch or crash or explosion sounds, unlike Centipede and Millipede!  What's THAT all about?  Guess it's starting to bother me now!  Also, I noticed that sometimes after you shoot a poisoned mushroom, the space where it was is still poisoned, so when the megalegs hits it, then down to the bottom right away it comes.  Sloppy programming, Dubno.  Sloppy programming.
Okay, I think that that's all the witty and perceptive observations I had about Megalegs.  Back to Candy Crunch, as my brother calls it!

Atari emulator -> Cannibals

In a blogger's typical haste, I was going to call this the worst game ever, but then I forgot how much I absolutely hate Crypts of Plumbous.  I went on the internet to try and figure out this game, because I didn't realize that you're supposed to hit the things on the head after they get stuck in the holes you dig.  Now I love this game!  Any game that advocates blunt force trauma to someone's head can't be all bad, right?  Still, there's something that bothers me... 115 points per bad guy?  Really?  Seriously?  Bet there's a story behind that!  Probably the guy's room number at college or sumpthing.

2/15/'21 - He did live at 119 John Bright Street!  Maybe his true love lived at 115 John Bright St.  Note to future self: you hit things on the head with the trigger button (0 on the numpad), and you've got about 0.7 seconds in which to do it... innit?  A game of slow action otherwise.  Semi-intriguing contrast in this variation of... Burgertime?  Apple Panic?  Mr. Do's Castle?

Compete against millions!

Somehow I need better odds than that.  Something depressing about coming in 500,000th place.  But somehow I don't think I'm the only one.  All those poker players on the TV who don't make it into the bubble?  Oh, there's some bitter tears there, lemme tell ya!  In fact, I've never seen an unsore loser on any of these poker TV shows, come to think of it!

Gamergate

So how do I feel about it?  Well, after I heard that the video game industry is pretty much a bunch of cartels, well... that's a world I'm probably never going to be a part of.  I dunno.  Maybe teenage boys will just get tired of the objectification of women!  Well, kids are different these days... shyeah, right.  Well, I'm from the Atari age of video games myself.  Not a lot of sexy girls in those.  Besides, I already knew that the girls didn't like me all that much anyway.  I can only imagine what dealing with sexy girls in video games is like.  How would that translate to the real world?  Probably not well for me.  Someone more handsome and/or dickish could probably pull it off.  I'm more of a Tetris and Doom kind of guy when it comes to video games.  I think men and women should come together and admit that, yes, we have unrealistic expectations of each other, but there's 7 billion of us on the planet, so we must be doing something right!

Whew!  Got through that!  All right, time to sit back and let the accolades roll in............................

Candy Crush ... SODA

Welp, I finally took the plunge (so to speak), but only because I thought there'd be some kind of cross-over deal where you get some Candy Crush bonuses for playing, you know the drill.  Apparently not.  But I'm with all the raving critics: King has another hit on their hands.  This'll be responsible for their second $500,000 a day.  As for me, well, I can only seem to handle one addicting game at a time.  Reminds me!  I gotta play Getaway! some more before going to bed.  Ah, God bless that laptop in my room

1/12/'16 - ....started up again.  I can stop anytime I want.  Well, I'm at level 38, and I'm just wondering if you need three friends to get to the enxt... next stage or whatever.  So far, not!  The Activision Gods are smiling down upon me

1/25/'16... I'm telling you, I've seen that purple octopus before.  Here's what I'm talking about...

 

...creepy, right?  What's the deal with the sexy squid?  So, here's where I've seen it before.

 That's right, it's the 1997 classic film "Men in Black."  Oh, and I colored it purple to make it seem more similar.  Guess I better do the blue head dots next.

3/13/16 3:23 pm

...another thing for Blogger to work on.

3/13/16, 3:23 pm - Welp, finally passed level 284.  Note to gamers and the developers at King alike: if the power goes out a few seconds before the official victory screen, signifying that you've passed the level... it doesn't register.  Not that I'm complaining much, mind you.  And maybe it's just me, but is the Soda version of the cake bomb in regular C. Crush a little rude?  I mean, is it a sphincter from hell or what?  I'm glad it clears the screen and all, but... I'm just sayin'.  I feel vaguely dirty is all.

3/23/'16, 7:50 pm - Welp, it took me about 65 tries, but I finally beat level 328.  Incidentally, they've got a new feature: some angry turtle that will eat any color of candy you pick.  But he'll... and I'm HOPING it's a he... he'll only do this if you get a certain number of the cyan diamond candies.  Makes me think of how on 'Wheel of Fortune' how they give you the RSTLNE up front in the final round, which just means they're picking harder puzzles now... 

3/26/'16 - Something else I just noticed.  When you cross a color bomb and a wrapped candy in the Soda saga, every candy of the crossed candy's color turns into a wrapped candy.  This is now what happens in REGULAR Candy Crush.  What used to happen is that the color bomb would turn into a wrapped candy and knock out two different colors of candies.  Is this going to throw certain levels off now? 

4/23/'16 - You know, they say that Candy Crush Soda is sodalicious, that you can't help but ask, how delicious is it?  Well, it's sodalicious that they keep getting new and exciting characters to come into the Candy Crush Soda universe.  Take this new guy, for instance...

...now where have I seen HIM before?

............................ah HAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! BUSS-TEDD!!!!!

5/15/16 - Still going.  I'm assuming it still doesn't work in Google Chrome.  Problems with the background, guys!  Fix it.  MEanwile, it still works in Firefox.  Hard to believe, I know...

8/3/'17 - This is probably a silly question, but... how can every third level be one that you'll have to play for the next month?

2/2/'18 - Dang, but this game's fun to play.  That's the gaming landscape these days for ya.  I was just in my local computer shop today, checking out their most expensive computer.  Three thousand bucks!  For that price, I better not have to bring it in for at least a year and a half... okay, six months.  But I was being completely rude and noisy... nosy, and I clicked on the window in the lower left hand corner, and... guess what popped up?  One of the Candy Crushes!  It's the scourge that's everywhere.

Anyway, for those of you stuck on level 700, fear not, for you've come to the right place.  Of course, part of the fun of playing the same level for a month is figuring out how to beat it, because it seems like all the levels in "Soda" are eventually beatable.  No need to buy powerups or anything like that... just waste / apply your time to it and the solution will present itself.  And you can see from the level preview that there's a predictable pattern for the candies up to a point.  But if you STILL need something a little more, here's the strategy that eventually got me past that darn 700 Club level

STRATEGY To MAXIMIZE PURPLE FISH

1st move: make the vertical line of 3 purple candies

swap 2,4 and 3,4

2nd move: horizontal line of red hots

swap 0,2 and 0,3

3rd: swap 3,0 and 4,0: FIRST FISH!

4th: swap 0,2 and 0,3 (horizontal line of red hots

5th: four more fish!

6th: swap 3,0 and 3,1 to make FIVE FISH!

...at this point, figure out better strategy

7th: swap 2,7 and 3,7 to make lemon fish

8th: swap 4,1 and 4,2 to make green fish

9th: swap 2 fish

More later.

11/3/'19 - Oh, I SO gotta add an entry for this new CCS feature: MOVE RUSH.  First, they warn you that it's coming, and then it arrives!  You get 10 seconds where a move you make doesn't count!  They even put a big infinity 8 on its side up there just for show.  Of course, you gotta play in an extra-fevered way like someone on speed or something... not that I would know, of course.  I prefer chocolate myself.  Think I'll have one right now, in fact!... okay, I guess that's it.  Also, level 1234 is shaped like numerals... try and guess which ones.

Admit it, Ladies..............................

There I go again.  Well, inciting a gender war is a blogger's most important function.  Seriously, though, who plays a game like this?  I bet more ladies play it than males!  Incidentally, why don't they ever have a "Females Only game."  Oh, what, that's not exciting enough?  It's like guys on Facebook who comment on the hot pics of sexy ladies... who would do that?  What's there to gain from it?  Certainly nothing if your boss were to ever read it, unless your boss is Bob Guccione or something.  Guess I'm just conservative that way.  Somehow I don't feel the need to post comments like "Ur so hot" or "Nice boobs."  Sorry, I mean Nice 80085... hmm!  Wonder if I've made a similar comment before.  Gotta be a way to make that process simpler.

Ooh! Quick! Another Firefox game...

Yes, for a limited time only... from the people who brought you Chicken of a Lesser God... is that what it's called?  Lemme check... oh, never mind that!  I just found fukgames.com!  With a name like Smuckers, it's got to be good!

Clearly I Have No Business Doing a Blog Like This

 Really?  $46,000?  And yet, arcades went out of business.  Go figure.  There's no place for kids to just hang out anymore... is there?  I mean, besides illegal drugs.

Dangerous Dave

There once was a man named Dave... no, better stop there.  Don't wanna violate my parole again.  Seriously, though, what kind of video game blog is it where you look up the word 'dangerous' and come up empty?  Well, it's time to remedy that!... I forget how.  Oh, right.  Dangerous Dave.  Not the follow-up episodes available on The Book of Id, but the DOS original.  Why, I set up my Windows XP computer, almost just for that reason!  Incidentally, even though you can go through the door on Level 6 before getting the grail, you shouldn't.  Sure, you get taken to a Warp Zone, but it also causes the game to crash.  Sure, you can still exit the game by hitting 'Esc', but the game's pretty much finished at that point.

Dangerous Dave on the YouTubes... dayamn, YouTube really does have everything.  How about Slordax?  ...yup!  Slordax!  That's how you know your game's successful, kids, when there's YouTube videos of it on YouTube.  Sokoban, for God's sake!

The Adventures of Micro-Man, Adventure 1: Crazy Computers!!!!!

Apparently, the gap between what I THOUGHT I've blogged about and what I've ACTUALLY blogged about is still quite wide.  But one thing's for sure: the size of this image file is about six times larger than all the files necessary to run Micro-Man 1, a game by that bloody genius Brian Goble.  His world corporate headquarters seems to have moved from just under the bridge in Seattle, Washington to Redmond, the original home of all things computers, and subsequently, all things beta testing.  They must be doing something right!
As usual, the map here is still a little bit incomplete, so if you take the lower, less-fun path, be sure to take the third zapper to get to the Guided Missiles and Large Energy.  Or, if you're still flying high from the superJump boost, do what I do and just go around the long way!  Either way, you can avoid that first fork in the road.  As much as I like switchbacking and getting hit by those mouths that cling to the wall, I've decided to take the upper path, and drop down to the part with the large energy and power shot.  Fan shot... please.  Ooh!  And I just found out that... nah, you get to figure out that one yourself.  As for me, I can beat it in ten minutes now!  Nyaah nyaah

YouTube version

Official online home of Microman: Hipsoft Games

ClubWPT online poker

 Actually, it's more for my friend, really.  Of course, they always complain that they like the Zynga poker better, but they still insist on playing this poker, the official online poker of the WPT.  The interface is bad, the graphics aren't superior like Zynga, it's not as fun, and it's too much like real poker.  But they keep playing, God bless 'em!
Here's my complaint, though, and maybe one of the nerds over there can tweak the JavaScript or add a couple lines of CSS3 or something.  I keep having to log out and log back in if I'm logged in.  See, my roommate's very lazy and can't seem to do any of this stuff themselves, so it's always up to me.  But if I'm already logged in and I hit that blue "Play Now" button, it doesn't take me to the various lobbies!  I have to log out, sign back in and retype my password (another complaint) and THEN hit the "Play Now" button to be taken to the three lobbies.  I know, I know, you gotta tweak the SQL on the server to fix it, and that's not your department.  Well, I gotta hand it to you.  When I was briefly in IT, I had to know everything.  Absolutely everything, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  I guess I shouldn't have been let in the door in the first place without the ten certifications that every IT person seems to need these days... okay, back to Candy Crush.  The new levels came out today, you know!

Video Game Babes

Well, that's one thing to differentiate the video games of old from the new ones.  Sex appeal!  I'm waiting for them to get the interface right, though... they should say "Fight.  Farm.  F... Make love to the girl of your dreams."  You know, all that Ernest Hemingway crap.

Sounds About Right

Wow.... Just what the world needs!  A new video game!  Warning, indeed.  And, why look!  It's got a name like World of Warcraft and Minecraft.  Not too many games named Mage out there, are there?

..Farmville?

Oh crap.  Well, here I go.  Why, I don't even have a bookmark for it anymore!  I don't know how many months or years it's been... seems like about a year and a half.  Maybe the game will tell me how long it's been!

..macaroni and cheese tree.  Ah, that takes me back.  I've been gone too long.  It's time to leave.

Facebook ---> Pet Rescue Saga

"Like" us to progress to the next level!  It's highway robbery, I tells ya!

Candy Crush... still?

Yes.  Still.  No new levels to conquer!  I'm all caught up.  260 in Dreamland, 560 or so in regular Candy crush... you know, if I was REALLY good, if I was really serious about blogging, I'd move on to other games.

8/2/14 - Okay, let's put the most recent ones up top instead.  Sigh.  It's come down to this.  While I'm waiting for new levels to be churned out, now I'm taunting my closest rival who just passed level 200 in Dreamland... ooh!  Just got another life!  Gotta run!

5/28/14 - Damn it.  Odus the Owl tells me there's new levels.  Gotta go!!!

5/31/14 - Damn.  The clogged artery in my chest is acting up again.  Anyway... oh, this level is so going to be changed at some point.  Maybe the 300 blue candies won't, but the taffy... or whatever those barriers are called.  Are they meringue?  The point being, this level just may be impossible!  Unless, of course, you're a billionaire and can afford thousands of lollipop hammers 'n sh... stuff.  I can't.  But I love a good challenge, so suffer on I must.

6/13/'14 - Made it!  They finally made 276 easier.  Still gotta get 300 blues, but you get 45 moves instead of 40, and the owl does its thing twice.  Kinky!  Now, is it just me, or is Dreamworld level 281 an awful lot like Dreamworld level 276?

6/17/'14 - ... geez,  I wonder if I'm addicted to this or something?  Just finished Dreamland level 289.  Now what am I supposed to do with all this pent-up frustration?  Gotta let the abscess of lives fill up anew.

7/5/14 - The new levels are here!  I hope they're sufficiently patriotic.  Time to petition my imaginary friends...

8/17/'14 - Ah, yes... Dreamland level 376 is going to take a while............................................

8/18/'14 - ...quicker than I thought!  But Dreamland level 380 will definitely take a while.  Just lost my last fish.  Apparently there's a jelly underneath the... you know, the thing that makes chocolate bars.  That boiling bucket thingie.  Well, there's a jelly under it that I can't get to yet.  Someone call tech support for me!  I don't think this blog post is gonna do it

8/24/'14 - ...it worked!  The nerds over at King read this... just kidding.  I'll bet they actually got flooded with complaints, but Dreamland level 380 is now passable, you insatiable Candy Crush fiends!  I just wanted to give a Shout Out to level 660.  I never thought I'd be able to pass that one!  The NSA must've taken pity upon me that one time I finally did.  Thumbs up, level creators.  May your creativity never dry up.

8/27/'14 - Oh boy!  New Dreamland levels!  Well, kudos to the creators of level 381.  Here's a new wrinkle that hasn't been used yet: no randomness!  I had to use all my extras to get past it, but the color bomb kept landing in the same place, as well as the lemon fish.  Diabolical!!!!!!!

8/30/'14 - Ah yes.  Now this level I'll be playing for a while, at least until the NSA takes pity on me and sets up the board so I easily win.  It's Dreamland level 383, and here's the magic formula that will keep me from winning without shelling out with the ol' credit card: you need the horizontal candies to smash the liquorice thingies to make the ingredients fall.  However, the owl gets knocked over quite easily now!  Maybe they'll make it more tolerant in the future.  Yeah, that's it.  Meantime, I can't win to save me life.  Oh, and maybe they'll lower the ingredient requirements later on too.  Right now you need ten to win.  I can't do it in 50 moves.  Also, you only get one owl-free move.  True, the owl leaves three times at moves 38, 25 and 12 (75%, 50% and 25% of the moves), but after one owl-free move, back it flies.  Always so happy to see it.  So unless I get at least 90 Lollipop Hammers, I'm going to be stuck here for quite some time.

10/11/'14 - Well, at least it worked, but Daniel Goleman will still be ashamed of me.  I used up practically all my daily charms, or whatever the hell they're called.  All my Lollipop Hammers and almost all my hands to defeat Level 383 of Dreamland.  On to level 384... geez!  It's just like the unpassable 677 in regular Candy Crush land!  I'll never catch up to my sole competitor now!

11/3/'14 - ...STILL?  Good lord.  I want to apply for a job with King.  I could start as software tester and move my way up, maybe.  Here's my letter of interest: I couldn't help but notice that, when I'm playing in Dreamland, and I get to the part where it asks me whether I think the maze was boring or wo-hoo, I can't help but notice that I have to refresh the page to get back to the game.  Alas, I don't know why that would be.  Maybe someone slipped in an errant line or two into the Ruby on Rails code.  Maybe it's the refreshed jQuery library, or maybe I've just got an old non-Windows 8 computer and I'm just chopped liver.  Yeah, that must be it.  If I were using a tablet or something like that, then sure, there wouldn't be a problem.  Employment achieved!

11/4/'14 - Awright!  The problem seems to be fixed.  I'm close to catching up on all the Dreamland levels.  Once you get up around 435 or so, due to popular demand, the owl goes away for longer and longer.  I missed that!

12/26/'14 - Well, I'm still beta testing this thing, and I seem to have found a flaw.  I haven't completely figured out when it occurs, but this time it was after I combined... you know, a wrapped candy and a striped candy, and it clears three horizontal rows, then 3 vertical rows.  The game seems to freeze after that, especially if there are three in a row afterwards.  Maybe it just does that on Chrome, I don't know.

1/19/'15 - All caught up again in both regular and dreamland!... maybe I'll check it again just in case there's any new levels...................... ....................... ................... .................. ............. ............. .............. .............. ................. ...................... .................. ................... ............ ................... .............. .............. .............. ................................. ............................

2/13/'15 - Boy!  Never thought I'd pass that tough one.  I already forgot which one... 829!  That's it.  It only took me 18 days.  Yessir, I'm finally once again all caught up on regular Candy Crush and Candy Crush Dreamland... better check it again just in case.  How sad is that?

2/14/'15, 1:42 am - This just in... a non-FDR related New Deal!  If you crush 1,000 of the red candies, you get a little bonus!  Ten gold bars and a lillehammer... I mean, a lollipop hammer.  Hmm!  Why do I feel the sudden urge to eat some Red Hots?... curious.  Anyway, sucks to be you right now, because I just got it!  A little bit easier than I thought.  While I didn't exactly cheat, here's what I did.  I hastily picked Dreamland Level 563, because a) it seemed like it'd have a lot of red, and b) when the Moon Struck thing happens, not only does the stupid owl disappear, but there's a chance there's red candies to be crushed.  The first time I tried, there weren't.  Lol.  But after that, BOOM!  Let the orgy of crushing red candies begin!  Geez, it took about twenty minutes... getting all the candies, not an orgy.  So hurry!  You've got 24 hours.  You know, like in the movies!

2/20/'15 - damn.  All caught up again.  Welp, as much as I hate to say it, and as fun as those spaceships are, maybe it's time to move on to a different game.  I know, I know...

3/15/'15 - Hah!  Lawrence Wilmore gave Candy Crush a not terribly derogatory shout-out.  A little nicer than Colbert did.  Anyway, just solved Dreamland level 597.  Sucks 2BU!  ...okay, I'll give you my hint that I took way too long to figure out.  The key is to cross a striped and a wrapped on the LEFT side.  That's for starters.  A second one would help too, but you might have enough fish on the board to get the rest of the jelly.  Ball's in your court!

 3/19/'15 - ...76 million likes and they're still insecure.  But maybe it's for the best if Candy Crush goes away.  As for me, I just finished level 890, and... well, I dunno.  Those last 15 were kinda easy!  Is that all you got, King?  ... I hope so, because I got a final I should really study for... TWO of them!  Good Lourdes.

6/28/'15 - Well, if my man Larry Wilmore can keep making Candy Crush references, then damn it, so can I, damn it!  Besides, there's a new wrinkle to it.  Because people aren't opening their wallets as much as the King Corporation would like them to, they have to give the powerups away for free... but not TOTALLY free!  No, you gotta work for your powerups.  And on specific levels, if you go back over the map, some of the levels rise and fall like cylinders in some sort of engine-type thing.  You go to those levels, and certain random candies appear with a special "C" on them.  And all you have to do is collect about 600 of those, and BOOM!  More powerups!  At first I thought to myself, "Well, that's the silliest thing I've ever seen".................. flash forward to today, and here I am, going back to level 830-diggity-something, collecting them powerups.  DAMN YOU CANDY CRUSH!  You win this round... but the square's far from triangle... ?

Oh, and in case the game makers see this... you might as well not have level 976 be one of the special levels.  I mean... only five moves?  Not enough time to have one of the special 'C' candies show up!  Wotta gyp.

7/5'15, 12:42 am - And so, I bequeath to you the fruits of my hard work.  If you're like me (scary thought, I know) and you've been reduced to collecting those 600 special candies, here's the levels to do it at: 55, 223, 268, 281, 300, 325, 344, 381, 452, 511, 562, 591, 621, 632, 654, 665, 666, 712, 725, 751, 756, 794, 859, 866, 906, 918, 932, 945, 966, 1003, 1073, 1087, 1137, 1157, 1168... 1886, 1955.  That oughta get you started.  You're welcome!

9/4/15, 10:36 pm  - Welp, it happened again.  Level 1180's just way, way too tough for me.  As someone in the Candy Crush chat room said about a similar level, I'll need about a hundred Lollipop Hammers and about 200 of those Red Glove thingies to get through this one.  That's why I think I need to officially retire from Candy Crush Saga, and move on to the other things I wanted to do with my life.

But before I go, I would like to point out a flaw that I found in the game... or maybe two.  That purple checked candy doesn't seem to belong there, hanging in space.  But I will give kudos to the gamemakers, because even though the board froze like that, I could still hit the red escape button to terminate the game.  Face it, folks!  It's an attrition-based affair!  There's people in the chat rooms asking how to beat this level or that level... you must break against these levels like water!  Breach the dam with your awesome dissolving power and sheer upstream force!

9/23/'15 - Yup.  Still.  Well, still trying, anyway.  The Internet apparently does not want me to play Candy Crush today.  Something about Google Chrome.  Can't load Facebook, can't load Candy Crush... oh well.

12/10/'15 - Damn.  Passed 1389 already.  I thought it was going to take a year's worth of powerups to do it.

1/14/'16 - Oh boy!  Found a new flaw on level 1475.  It has to do with those spaceships and licorice swirls.  See, as any C.C. player of experience can tell you, the spaceships fire off three wrapped candies into the air, and where they land they know not where.  But what happens if they land on top of a liquorice swirl?  Yup, you guessed it... the licorice gets lost in the shuffle!  It doesn't go towards your count.  It just disappears.  That happens on another level too, but it's not as big of a problem.  But with the various bottlenecks on 1475, it IS a problem.  It'll take me about a months' worth of powerups to fix this.  But who knows?  Maybe I can get by with less than 28 lollipop hammers to do it.

3/27/'16 - The regular Candy Crush programmers are tinkering again.  See, it used to be that when you crossed a wrapped candy with a color bomb, the color bomb would act like a wrapped candy, disappearing one color, pulsating a little while the computer did some processing, then disappear an unprecedented second color.  It's all different now!  Now when a color bomb and a wrapped candy get crossed, all the candies of the color turn into wrapped candies!  Will this have some unforeseen consequences?  Well, for one, on level 1476, one of your three goals is to get 100 wrapped candies.  If you do a match as I previously described, this is a less difficult task!... IMHO, mind you.  I don't have the hard data to back this up... not yet, anyhow.  Work on that, Internet.

4/3/'16 - Level 1634... oh, Candy Crush Saga.  Why do you have to be mean to me like that?  Okay, I'll get my credit card out..................................................................

4/5/'16 - Also, the cake bombs' power is significantly diminished.  How did that happen exactly?  Oh well.

4/24/'16 - Stuck on Level 1658.  I took some time off away from the Candy Crush... but I made sure to check in every day and collect my powerups!  Just like I used to do with Treasure Madness.  I used all my powerups to get past level... 1650 or something, so I'm stranded again.  So, remember that, future game designers!  Make your users PAY for the extra $h!t... stuff.  Extra stuff.  Cash money, PayPal, MasterCard, Money Order, what have you

(7:04 pm ) ... never mind!  Just beat it.  I rule.

2/19/17, 1:29 pm - Stuck on level 2032.  And, I'm too much of a chesapeake... cheapskate to use my visa card to get more powerups.  Therefore, I gotta just waste time instead, getting more.  I figure about ten of the hands will do it... actually, maybe not.  Better make it twenty.  Better wait til May 1st or so to get enough powerups

3/3/'17 - Level 2053: I got, like, fifty of those candies you're supposed to collect!  Oh, that's SO not going to be a regular feature.  Gotta wait 8 hours to find out now.