PixlBit

I have the original Phantasy Star (and PSII and PSIV) on my Wii Virtual Console on Wii U. I never could get past the first town in that game. I think I'll stick with Dragon Quest I-IV for my 8-bit RPG fix, LOL.

I recently downloaded the PlayStation Namco Museums on my PSTV. All five volumes are on PSN now. My favorite is Volume 2, which has Gaplus (the underappreciated third game in the Galaxian/Galaga series), Mappy, Dragon Buster, and Super Pac-Man. Volume 1 has Pac-Man and Galaga, Volume 3 has Ms. Pac-Man, Dig-Dug, Galaxian, and The Tower of Druaga. Volume 5 has Pac-Mania and The Legend of "Valkyrie." Volume 4 is the most obscure.

I think Nintendo does test the waters with its choices of Smash Bros. characters. If the characters prove popular and Nintendo receives that feedback, that gives Nintendo incentive to do something with them, and I think that's what this blog is getting at. There really isn't much that can be done with franchises like Ice Climbers or Game & Watch anyway.

Powerstone is a fun fighting series. I played it a few times on Dreamcast (never owned a DC) and later bought the PSP version. I'm thinking of getting the digital PSP version to play on my PSTV. I wish Capcom would revisit the series.

To me, it's also a 3-D version of the gameplay in Smash Bros, and a direction I wish Nintendo would consider for that series.

Congrats on the new job. Keeping busy is important for fighting depression.

Stephen King has always considered Pet Sematary his scariest book, and it's one he was very reluctant to publish. There is a good reason for that: Gage is based on King's younger son, Owen, and the incident where he ran out into the road at the age of two as a tanker truck was coming down the highway was real. In real life, King was able to reach Owen in time and pull him to safety, but he was haunted so badly by the near-miss that he fell into depression. Pet Sematary was the result of his fears of what would have happened if he hadn't been able to save his son. He never intended to publish it until his wife read it and encouraged him to publish it as a way of dealing with his feelings. Gage's sister, Ellie, is based on King's daughter Naomi and her real-life grief and anger over the death of her cat was also worked into one of the book's scenes..

I would argue that while some of these are coincidences, Super Smash Bros does have at least some effect on what Nintendo chooses to develop or localize for non-Japanese markets. Fire Emblem had never been localized before SSB Melee, and I do believe it was because the appearance of Marth and Roy in Melee got American gamers interested in the series that Nintendo finally decided to give Fire Emblem a chance in the US. Pit appeared in Brawl, and then Nintendo made Kid Icarus: Uprising. Even Earthbound's VC release could be attributed to the popularity of Ness and Lucas in the SSB games.

Think about it: if Nintendo gets feedback that certain characters are very popular and that gamers are interested in seeing the series that the games came from, it's entirely conceivable that they would act on it.

Blast Corps would be cool with modern graphics and physics.

Other than Perfect Dark, I wasn't all that enamoured with Rare during my N64 days. I liked Nintendo EAD stuff a lot better and I even preferred a couple of Konami's games over the bulk of Rare's offerings. I guess Conker was cool for trying to bring crude humor to a console known for family friendly platformers.

Super Mario 64 was the most amazing game I'd ever played up to that point. For me it was probably the single biggest leap in gaming I ever saw.

Fun factoid: Completed Suikoden save files can carry over from Suikoden 1 to Suikoden 2. And Suikoden 2 files can in turn carry over to Suikoden 3 on PS2.

There are a lot of caterpillars here in Maryland. One of my co-workers is absolutely creeped out by them.

For me, the best bosses were Marmota and Selvaria from Valkyria Chronicles, Zombie King Tom from Ni no Kuni, and the Super Mutant Behemoths in Fallout 3 (the Veteran Rangers in New Vegas were bastards as well, but I don't know if they count as bosses) were standouts. Also liked Mr. Sandman from Punch-Out and some of the boss battles in Dragon's Crown.

Twilight Princess stands out above all, but since that game started as a Gamecube game and the Gamecube version was the one I got, I consider that game to be a 6th-gen game.