Last night, The Wife and I decided to putt putt to the Pizza Hut for dinner to try out a recent addition to their menu: The Crown Crust pizza, seen above. As a matter of full disclosure, I had inquired how long the limited-time promotion would be available, as I wanted to do this review before they stopped serving them and I’m still waiting for my paycheck to come in. In response, the folks running their Twitter account offered me a gift card which handily covered the cost of the meal for this review.

Sonic Generations has paved the way for a game long awaited by many fans.

Wow, another month has passed already? Here are the latest reviews I’ve written, and expect to see plenty more in the near future with a new gig I’ll reveal in due time (hint: It’s not iPhone/social games this time).

From Mario’s Hat:

LEGO City Undercover – An extremely fun game, and one of the best offerings on the Wii U thus far, it’s definitely a must-have part of any Wii U library.

If you visit m’boy Matt over at Press The Buttons, you might be familiar with a series of articles he has called “Secret Origins,” wherein he relates tales of how he came to possess certain games of note from his collection. I had hoped to borrow the tag for this, but he had other ideas, so I’m left wanting for a better title.

It’s probably just as well, I don’t imagine I have nearly as many interesting stories to warrant the title as he does (go check them out). Most of my tales these days tend to begin and end with “sign here, please.” Maybe I’ll come up with something later, if I can think of something worthy of spinning into a full yarn.

Anyway, with Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon mere days away from release, now seems like a good time to share an amusing little story (well, I find it amusing) of how I came to own the original Luigi’s Mansion for the GameCube, a title which is one of my favorites. The funny thing is, I wasn’t even looking for it at the time. Well, not exactly…

It’s funny, perhaps even poetic, in a way: Whereas my debut article on 1UP was about Mario, my debut article on IGN is instead about his younger brother, Luigi.

In “Second Banana Saga: The Story of Luigi,” I give a brief look back at Luigi’s storied career as the second son of the Super Mario Parents. From his debut in Mario Bros., Luigi’s long been content to stand behind his older brother, for better or for worse– and there have been instances of “worse,” to be sure.

But 2013 marks “The Year of Luigi” for Nintendo, and things are kicking off in a great way with the release of Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon. I’ve got my copy in my Nintendo 3DS XL as we speak, and you can expect a review to hit Mario’s Hat in the near future. But for now, feel free to become better-acquainted (or simply reacquaint yourself) with the road traveled by the brother in green.

Well, my time on 1UP is at an end, as 1UP itself is at an end. That should free me up a bit of time to try to post more here and on my other sites, though it’s also a blow to my bank account, which means some time needs to be spent looking for more work. It’s a vicious cycle; I could really use help monetizing these sites, but until that happens…

As for 1UP, if you’d like to read my thoughts on that, you can find them here. For now, reviews from elsewhere.

From Slide to Play:

Sonic Dash – Sonic was born to run, so how does he do in an endless runner? Not bad, but…

This Fall, Namco Bandai is preparing to bring its mascot, Pac-Man, back into the mainstream spotlight with Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures, a new computer-rendered cartoon show which effectively rebuilds the franchise from the ground up. It’s been in development for years, but if you’ve seen his appearances in Pac-Man Party or even Street Fighter X Tekken (well, the PlayStation versions, at least), then you’ve already had a glimpse of what they’re doing with the yellow dot-munching hero and, in the former case, his ghostly rivals.

My next article for 1UP has just been posted, but I didn’t do it alone– it was a joint effort with my wife as we continue the 1UP Cover Story “It Came From Outer Space!” with “Spacebound: How Aliens Shape the EarthBound Story.” After all, aliens play an integral role in the shaping of the world and stories of the Mother series, so it seems like a perfect fit for such a theme, does it not?

As always, I hope you’ll give it a look and, if you enjoyed it, give it a thumbs-up, and maybe leave a comment.

My latest article, “Star Fox: Charting Possible Courses for the Future,” is now available for your reading pleasure on 1UP. With this year marking the 20th anniversary of the original game and a near-total absence from Nintendo’s last console generation, we’re left to wonder just what the future has in store for Fox McCloud and his friends.

Computer-generated imagery, circa 1984. And by “computer-generated,” I mean “I would joke that someone made this commercial in MS Paint, except the program didn’t even exist until the following year.”