PixlBit

I don't agree with a lot of what Nintendo does, but most of what I don't agree with isn't that big of a deal to me. I don't approve of big companies muscling little kids' parties regardless of who it is. I do wish they'd replace most of their Nintendo of America staff and hire people that have experience in doing business in both Japan and the United States, like they used to have when Howard Lincoln and Minoru Arakawa were in charge. I don't care much about online gaming other than fighting games but I can appreciate how tone-deaf their approach to online infrastructure is. Most of what I would like them to get with the program with is more in line with making them competitive with MS and Sony and ensuring a healthier ecosystem. I wish they would treat Metroid better, but given the fact that Metroid has never been a sales blockbuster they've actually been pretty kind to the series overall.

That said, they make a lot of games I enjoy very much, and they make a lot of games other companies won't touch. Zelda will always be my favorite overall video game series, Mario is unrivalled in platforming. There are other "lower tier" series like Fire Emblem, and Nintendo will also try ideas that generally only come from "indie studios," only they're not also hamstrung by poor budgets like most indie games are. They also do as much as companies like Xseed, Atlus, and NISA to get smaller tier games out of Japan and into the US, especially since Operation Rainfall, and given that I like very little of what's produced in the US and Europe these days, that's important to me. I also appreciate that Nintendo doesn't lick EA's asshole like a chocolate ice cream cone the way Sony and Microsoft do just because of EA's exclusivity with the NFL and FIFA.

And at the end of the day, I buy Nintendo's stuff because they make games I want to play. As long as they bring goods I like I'm willing to forgive them some shenanigans. Sorry... but not sorry.

If switching between TV and portable is as easy as docking/undocking it, awesome. I wouldn't mind taking along Breath of the Wild or Dragon Quest XI for long hours spent at Pep Boys or the doctors' office, then just being able to play it on TV at home during my gaming time. So many games on DS, 3DS, PSP, and Vita, I was always thinking, "If only these games could be playable on a console on my TV."

I enjoyed the Genesis Sonic games more than the 16-bit Mario games, to be honest, and I was a SNES owner. My big gripe with Sonic is that for all the emphasis on speed, there are too many levels that don't let you charge through at top speed or you'll get killed. That was always a bit of a contradiction of design for Sonic.

One of Sega's biggest failings with Sonic was putting him on the back burner for the Saturn and throwing all of its resources behind Virtua Fighter instead. Don't get me wrong, VF is my favorite fighting franchise, and Sega emphasized Virtua Fighter because that was what was popular in Japan. But had Sega worked more on Sonic during the Saturn era, he might have had better fortunes, and the Saturn might have done a bit better in a three-way rivalry with Mario and Crash Bandicoot. That said, Sega saturated the Genesis with Sonic (Sonic 1-3, Sonic and Knuckles, plus spinoffs), so Sonic may not have been enough to overcome all of the Saturn's other issues. One thing that keeps Nintendo's properties high-value is that Nintendo usually (not always, though) spaces them out and leaves folks wanting more.

Sonic is ultimately a relic of a time when Sega was a console maker. He was the "face" of the Genesis and the Dreamcast. Now Sega doesn't make consoles anymore and hasn't offered Sonic as a mascot for either the PlayStation or the Xbox to keep up a rivalry with Mario, so Sonic has a bit of a hard time finding his place in the gaming market. This reflects in the many directions Sega has tried to take him that didn't pan out. However, he is still Sega's most successful and recognizable property. Sega needs to find one direction with Sonic that works, and stick with it.

Cool, cool. P5 is looking like it's going to be really good. I actually bought rhe collectors' edition of TMS #FE on launch day and played it, and I enjoyed it. I just wanted to read your opinion on the game. I would like to see the same concept done in reverse, FE x SMT, as a strategy RPG.

I still need to get that....

This is the only game in the series that made it out of Japan, sadly.

It isn't tile-based. The combat is quite good, and is turn based.

Turn-based. Lots of creative skills.

My vote would go to Burning Rangers. There was also a firefighting game on PS1 called Roscoe McQueen: Firefighter Extreme which was made by Psygnosis. It apparently wasn't all that great though.

I generally don't mind the grind in traditional RPGs, as it leads to rewards that are fairly handed out. In most games you really don't have to grind unless you're looking to beat an optional superboss.

Where I have a problem with grinding is when you're expected to find 100 orc scalps, 50 dragon spleens, or other such vendor trash to complete a pointless fetch quest, which is the case with most MMORPGs I've played including WoW. I also primarily associate grinding with free-to-play games, where they intentionally make the gameplay tedious in order to entice you to spend money on microtransactions.