Review a Bad Game Day: Fortune Street

When you look at the cover of Fortune Street, you’re immediately reminded of Mario Party. A prolific series, Mario Party saw only two releases on the Wii, and fans of the series kept clamoring for more. I thought Fortune Street might make a good substitute. When I first saw Fortune Street on a store shelf, I thought that it looked interesting. Nobody in the local game shop knew much about it, though. I went home and looked up a little more information about it, and found Amazon selling it a ridiculously low price, I had to at least try it. Little did I know it would become my first entry in Review a Bad Game Day.

Featuring characters crossing over from the Dragon Warrior universe and the Nintendo universe, players participate in a board game, rolling a die and having the option to buy up property. You can try to bid on properties that are already owned, or forcefully overtake them by paying much more than their current value. You might do this because properties in a series are worth more when you own them all. You also travel around the board collecting suits (like cards: Ace, Heart, Spade, Club) and use them to ‘power up’ your property the next time you land on one (much like buying houses or hotels in Monopoly).

And that’s that. There are more complex rules one can play by, some sort of stock market simulator is involved… I left the game at a friend’s house and he played it more than I did, but literally only out of sheer boredom.

Evidently the Fortune Street series has had a long run in Japan, but they must have known American Audiences might react this way to it, as it did not see a release in the United States until it appeared here on the Nintendo Wii, featuring cross-over characters like Mario and Donkey Kong. Unfortunately, the gameplay makes me feel like a pompous business man, not a hyper-active Italian plumber in a fictional land of wonder and amazement.

Fortune Street plays like Mario Party meets Monopoly but with gameplay designed by actual bankers.& realtors. Frankly, if you want Mario Party, get Mario Party, if you want Monopoly, get Monopoly.

Where's My App? Helps you transition to Windows Phone

Okay, sure, not every app that everyone is buzzing about is available on Windows Phone. But Microsoft’s Where’s My App? app intends to help people realize that the Windows Phone platform isn’t as desolate as it is made out to be.

Where’s My App? show cases the most popular iOS and Android apps, and tells you whether or not they are available on Windows Phone. If they aren’t, it will give you a useful hint to let you know if the app is in development, or if there are 3rd party apps that can provide the same or similar functionality. Are you looking for Yahoo! Fantasy Sports apps? What bout Chase Bank Mobile? Need a substitute for Instagram? Check out #2InstaWithMassiveLove!

This app will ease the transitional pain of coming to Windows Phone, were the phone is so much more than just the apps installed on it. So be sure to use Where’s My App? and give Windows Phone a fair shake.

Cannot save files from Adobe Reader to Offline Folders

I recently had a user call me and explain that they couldn’t save to their offline files and folders when offline. Little did I know the can of worms we were going to open.

The troubleshooting rabbit hole involved finding out that you could, in fact, copy and paste documents in to those folders, however we couldn’t save PDF files from Adobe Reader by using the File/Save command. No error message appeared, they looked like they saved, but when you looked in the folder, the file would be missing. It was specific to Adobe Reader. Once I knew that, I had to dig further.

In the end, the problem was that Adobe Reader wouldn’t allow the user to save files in the Offline folder because it was sandboxed (an enhanced security mode which doesn’t allow Adobe Reader to react with other applications, in an attempt to prevent virus infected PDF files from infecting your whole system). To resolve this, close any open PDF documents, but open Adobe Reader. Click Edit, then Preferences. On the left click Security (Enhanced), then UNCHECK Enable Enhanced Security at the top of the Window, and click OK. Exit Adobe reader, then try again. It should work without a problem now!