PixlBit

The Ultima game that Garriott was talking about was Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar, which is widely considered a high point in the series, including by Garriott himself. It was a huge departure from the way RPGs were/are traditionally designed, which was a response to a combination of the 1980s moral panic going on in the US in the wake of Reagan's election, and Garriott's own concern that the earlier games encouraged too much thievery and senseless killing from supposed heroes. There was no overriding villain to defeat. Your quest was to become the Avatar, the personification of the Eight Virtues of Britannia. As such, besides the pilgrimage to the shrines of the Eight Virtues, almost every action you took in the game was judged by its own karma system. Fighting thieves, bandits, and monsters would raise your valor, while letting animals like snakes escape would raise your compassion, and so on. The shopkeeper was a test of the player's honesty.

I attended two Distant Worlds concerts, one in St. Louis, and one in Omaha where I got to meet Nobuo Uematsu and have him sign my FFIX cover art. In the one in St. Louis, Susan Calloway performed the opera song that Celes sings in FFVI. 

It had a lot of good RPGs, but honestly, most of them should have been on PS3 instead. 

I got a Wii as soon as I found one in stores, however, I got Twilight Princess on Gamecube. It was a fun system. My stepkids and I enjoyed Wii Sports, and I got Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn. The middle years of the Wii were kind of weak, loved Punch-Out though. It made a strong finish with the Op Rainfall games, but I wasn't very happy with Reggie. He had a tendency to tell people what they wanted rather than give people what they wanted. 

Of the 7th generation, I'll say this:

The 360 started strong (online and a few JRPG catches) and had a weak ending with their emphasis on Kinect and non-gaming applications..

The PS3 started weak with a high price tage and no games, and ended very strongly (JRPGs made their comeback in the later years of the PS3, and The Last of Us has blown up into a media franchise).

The Wii started strong, had a weak middle (Wii Music? Really?) and had a strong lineup in their last years (Skyward Sword and the Operation Rainfall RPGs), though sales of the Wii slowed pretty rapidly after 2010. 

I got one of these for Virtua Fighter 5 Online, since the PS3 didn't have any comparable online fighting games (and was still very expensive). I also enjoyed Fallout 3 and Tales of Vesperia on 360. It almost made me overcome my general antipathy towards Microsoft products in general... until it crapped out with the E74 error, another defect that Microsoft tried to lie about until they were threatened with legal action.  I switched to PS3 after that.

Had a lot of interesting games on it, though a lot of them were games I wish they'd made for Wii or PS3 instead of DS. Sadly, it was the weakest Zelda machine, though Spirit Tracks was better than Phantom Hourglass.  The DS ultimately became a Dragon Quest machine for me since they released the Zenithia trilogy on it, which included Dragon Quest 5 and 6, never before released in the US. Dragon Quest 5 ranks up there with 8 and 11 as my "holy trinity" of Dragon Quest, and I would like to see it get a console re-release.

I'm definitely enjoying Fire Emblem Engage. It's story is rather goofy (I do like FemAlear's design, I will admit), but it does take me back to the Tellius games, Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn, which were my jumping-on point with the series. 

Stage Select:

Playing several of the Zelda games again, namely the first game, A Link to the Past, Twilight Princess, and Breath of the Wild, which are my favorites. One of the things I loved about Breath of the Wild is that it did kind of remind me of my first time playing the original game, at the age of 10, back in 1987.

Ultima III: Exodus was probably my first "traditional" RPG. I've since beaten it and know how to blow through it, but back in 1988, it seemed so big, mysterious, and full of unlimited potential.  The same thing could be said about Starflight, but again, I got a sense of that recently when I started playing No Man's Sky, which has quickly become a firm favorite.

Final Fantasy VI, my first Final Fantasy, and FFVII, which had an unrivaled sense of spectacle at the time.

Dragon Quest VIII, which was special because I played it with my wife the first year I was married.

Cage Match:

I had to go to Google to look these games up, since I could only vaguely remember these names. I'm going to give it to Dr. Muto out of respect to Ed Logg, who is a gaming legend. 

I got a charcoal-black GC for my birthday. It's one of my favorite systems ever even now. The Nintendo 64 let me down, so the Gamecube had a lot to do to regain my trust. And it delivered. Wind Waker and Twilight Princess were two of the most amazing games I'd ever played, and Metroid Prime and Resident Evil 4 signaled the return of action games.  Plus, it was great to have strong RPGs on a Nintendo system again. Tales of Symphonia, Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, Skies of Arcadia, Baten Kaitos, and Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life were my favorites, and I also enjoyed playing FF Crystal Chronicles with a friend. The Gamecube version of Soulcalibur II with Link was a nice little bonus. Some years I played Gamecube and bought more games than I did for PS2.  

We're getting a lot of these games released on the Switch this year. It's 2004 all over again.

Final Fantasy X was my first PS2 game. There were so many amazing RPGs on it, but it also seemed like action games also made a big comeback on PS2, thanks to games like Devil May Cry. Grand Theft Auto III and Vice Ciry were also fun. I played Dragon Quest VIII with my wife, got FFXII the next year. My last PS2 game was Sakura Wars, bought in March 2010. 

I think the PS2 would have crushed it anyway because of the incredibly strong position Sony was in when the PS1 launched. I loved the Gamecube, but Nintendo was in a weakened position and still struggled despite stronger Japanese support. Microsoft was finally getting a long-overdue lesson that throwing its overflowing checkbook at everything didn't guarantee domination. (Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be a lesson that they internalized.)

Even setting aside DVDs, the PS2 was pretty much the default choice, though the DVDs did help at first. I feel that being the lead console for the unexpected blockbuster Grand Theft Auto franchise was what helped Sony in the long run.