Deals; you want them, I’ve found ’em, so let’s get right to it. One thing I will mention this morning is an early promo that’s begun well before the forthcoming Amazon Prime Day. The TL;DR: if you spend $200 or more and checkout using Zip with the code ZIP10OFF, you get $10 off whatever you’re buying (T&Cs, Prime members only, yada yada). Not a huge windfall, but every buck helps.

In retro news, I’m celebrating the 30th birthday of Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3, an OG Game Boy great I burned many a battery on. This quirky platformer delivered a bunch of firsts—it established the beachhead for the wildly successful Wario Land series, and it introduced a multiple ending mechanic. Screw saving a princess; Wario’s happy ever after was determined by how much crap you looted along the way, and a good pay day required smart use of uniquely Wario transformations (Bull, Dragon, Jet, Small and Bomb). In the end, this weird experiment by Nintendo’s R&D1 division spawned five Wario sequels, but also kind of broke things by triggering a drought of original handheld Mario games until 2006’s New Super Mario Bros.

This Day in Gaming

Aussie birthdays for notable games.

– Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 (GB) 1994. Ebay

– The Legend of Zelda (GBA) 2004. Ebay

– Onimusha 3: Demon Siege (PS2) 2004. Ebay