What I've Been Playing! May 2026

Hey all! It's once again time to talk about a month that's passed by. I feel like every month has gone so fast so far this year, hopefully it slows down at least a little... Anyways, here's a little bit of what I've been playing this last month!

1. Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream - Nintendo Switch

I'm sure this one was expected for this list, but yes, my girlfriend and I have both been playing a good amount of Tomodachi Life. It's one of two games that I consider to be the last Nintendo releases I care about before dropping them entirely (the other being Rhythm Heaven Groove this summer), so it was nice to see that it's at least a quality title to be one of the last two! I can't in good faith endorse buying it, but pirate it if you're interested to play it.

I'm not nearly as invested in making elaborate Miis as some people are, I think I tend to take the approach of "If this person/character made a Mii, what would they make it look like?" and going from there. My girlfriend, on the other hand, goes crazy with the face paint mechanic, and has made some truly amazing stuff with it! I've been posting some screenshots on my tumblr, so you can check those out if you want.

2. Rhythm Heaven Megamix - Nintendo 3DS

I started a new save of Megamix this month! I haven't played since I got my New 2DS back in... jeez, when was that? Early 2025? Something like that. Anyways, it was a game I played a lot on my old 3DS, but I never fully beat it, much less collected all the rhythm games. There's a lot of complaints I have about this entry in the series, but I'll save those for a potential review of it when I finally finish it all the way. Suffice it to say, I'm very mixed on Megamix, but I am having a good time. It's something I'm playing more casually, a lower priority than making progress in some other games I've been working on, but I am working through it. It's nice to have rhythm games from Fever on a device without input lag, ahaha!

3. Club Nintendo Picross (クラブニンテンドーピクロス) - Nintendo 3DS

Following up on my PICROSS e progress from last month, here's another game I picked up! I went out of my way to research the release order of all the Jupiter Corporation picross games on 3DS, and download them into an organized folder so I can play them in order. I haven't squeezed much picross in recently, but I'm currently juggling e2 and Club Nintendo so I can clear them both, before moving on to e3.

4. Mario Kart DS - Nintendo DS

Mario Kart DS is probably one of my favorite Mario Kart games, up there with Wii and Double Dash. A while ago (like, two years ago or something?) I wiped my cartridge with the intention to replay it and unlock everything again. I uh, never got around to that, but I've been in the mood to play it so I just picked up my replay right where I left it! I've playing on a DS lite now instead of my OG or DSi since I'm on the go a lot, and the controls definitely make it harder... The DS lite isn't a few good console for most action-based games, it excels at slow games and stuff like tile-based adventure games. The d-pad just isn't accurate enough, and the buttons are too soft to feel good. In the case of Mario Kart, this means I find myself randomly stopping in the road when the accelerator decides I'm not pushing the button hard enough, or missing a drift because the d-pad wasn't responsive enough. It's not a total deal-breaker or impossible to play, but it is significantly harder. I recommend using anything but a DS lite if you play this game.

Other than that, it's Mario Kart! I've been grinding gold trophies for a week or so now, and I've made it up to 150cc but I've been slowing down there. I have 2 out of 8 trophies so far, and then there's Mirror Mode after, so we'll see how that goes. Maybe I can get some friends to play it with me sometime soon, just as a little party thing!

5. Pokémon HeartGold Version - Nintendo DS

I come and go from making progress on this, but I do have a 300+ hour save file in Pokémon HeartGold that I'm trying to take all the way as a "for all time" personal save of the game. I started this specific adventure back in June of 2024 after having done a couple runs of the game before, and wanting to set a personal save forever as well as play through it with my girlfriend as she did SoulSilver. This continues to be my personal favorite Pokémon game, and is a part of what I believe to be the best generation of Pokémon (though there is an argument to be made for Gen 5; at the very least I consider 4 and 5 to be the peak).

Thus far, I have all 16 gym badges, I've defeated Trainer Red, I've found five shiny leaves with a single Pokémon, and I've set a bunch of records in the Pokéathlon! Overall that puts my trainer card at 3 out of 5 stars. My last two stars are for completing the National Pokédex (barring Mythicals) and setting a 100-battle win streak at the Battle Tower.

I haven't made too much progress on the Battle Tower yet. I'm at the tail end of EV training my main party, and that was such an ordeal... It's been an on-and-off months-long project to get the berries I needed, grow the right amount of them, track all the EVs, research good training spots, and then finally get them maxed out. Technically I still need to max Typhlosian's Attack and Special Attack, but he wasn't a part of my main squad for the Battle Tower, so I'll do that when I feel like it. For now, I have Staraptor, Lopunny, Jolteon, and Scizor as my doubles team, though I can swap one of them out for Vaporeon if I feel like it would work better. I think now the 100-streak is purely a matter of grinding and RNG.

Regarding the National Dex, that's a whole project. My current stats are [Seen: 386 - Obtained: 330] and that includes all of the Mythical Pokémon that aren't actually required for completion. Getting some of them was more difficult than others, like Mew. In North America, Mew was only ever distributed via WiFi events, which means I'd need to connect to fan servers if I wanted to get those. Unfortunately, I don't have a method of getting my DS online right now, so I couldn't do that. In Japan, there were local wireless event cartirdges that distributed Mew, namely the 2007 PalCity event, but Japanese distributions only work with Japanese games. So my workaround was: download Japanese copy of Pokémon Pearl, download a save file that has enabled Mystery Gift, setup second DS with distribution ROM, recieve Mew, trade from Japanese Pearl to my HeartGold. It worked, I now have a Japanese Mew in my box, but god that was exhausting to set up. There's also some more niche setups I've been able to do, like recieving Riolu and Heatran and others from events related to the Pokémon Ranger games. I also got Electivire and Magmortar from the Pokémon Battle Revolution in-game distribution (that's actually a game I need to play more of). Other than that, I've already maxed out all of the random outbreaks that can happen, I've reset my copy of Diamond three times to get all the starters (I have a playthrough going on the cartridge now actually), and also transfered some Pokémon from my old Pokémon Platinum save I have from a couple years ago.

One thing I did recently was make a massive Excel spreadsheet with all of the missing Pokédex entries I still need, including information on how I might be able to obtain them. There's a metric ton of them that I just need to grind out evolutions to get, but some of them I need to breed to get their pre-evolutions. Not to mention, I don't have a legit copy of a Gen 3 game, so I can't transfer Pokémon from there or use it to make additional Pokémon appear, so I'll have to work around that somehow. I still have to go to the Safari Zone and try to catch some of the new Pokémon that have appeared from the decoration mechanic (long story...) so there's a few more I can tick off once I do. Currently trying to raise my friendship with Riolu to add Lucario to my dex.

April was such a busy month, gaming has fallen a little to the wayside. Apart from Tomodachi Life, I've been leaning heavily on the fact that my DS lite is slim and can sit in my pocket without bothering me all day, so I can just play when I can. I'm trying to let gaming become a more casual part of my life, a thing that I do instead of an obligation that I have. When working through my backlog became a job instead of a hobby, I think I lost the plot. I've been trying to reorient myself, and I think it's been working fairly well. Looking forward to seeing what games I finish and what games grab my eye throughout May!

~ Alex Amelia Pine