In the midst of a weekend of many amazing events, far and away, the best find of the weekend was the vintage Bubble Bobble machine Gaia and I got to play together in Mercer.  The machine alone is worth a five-star Yelp rating for the Pines Miniature Golf and Arcade on Highway 51.

Ebay is listing this machine at $500. You might find a worse place to throw half a G.

It was, also, home to the finest deep fried cheese I’ve ever had. Ever.

Gaia demanded I buy the wedding dress and veil, so I told her I was going to marry Tom Nook. When I showed her this photo I blew her little mind.

First she asked, somewhat astonished, “what is he doing outside?”

Then she asked, somewhat annoyed, “Why isn’t he holding your hand?”

Almost bi-annually, I hunker down in a new hastily named village in Animal Crossing and spend two or so months slowly playing my way through paying off the first few renovations to my little house.

And then the novelty wears off and I put the game down.

Along comes Fall of 2008 and Animal Crossing: Lets You Can Has City for the Nintendo Wii.

Interestingly, this time, I’ve actually resumed playing the DS version (Wild World) at the same time, which, is fun, considering that there is only so many things you can do in Animal Crossing in a single play session.

The most awesome thing in the world about Animal Crossing for the WII is the ability to take a screenshot and save it as a JPG on the Wii’s SD Card; I bought a 2 GB SD card exclusively for this feature.

As for the game, it’s pretty much the same-old, same-old. The Online Component is hysterically frustrating, the fishing as overly simplistic, and there are only about six personality archetypes between all the villagers.

What makes it so much more fun this time around is that Gaia and I are playing together. She has a guy, I have a guy, and we run around our little village (embarrassingly named “The Spot”) and we go to the city and get our hair did.

Even though a combination of game-crashing wifi-bugs and the insanity of Nintendo’s “Friend Codes” system has made any kind of online meet ups impossible for me, It’s more fun when you play together. That’s thanks to Gaia.