PixlBit

The Double Dragon game reminds me a bit of Double Dragon V: The Shadow Falls, a 1:1 fighter which itself was based on DiC's Double Dragon Cartoon. I guess this game was originally a Neo-Geo game, and come to think of it, I think I saw it in a couple of Neo-Geo arcade machines back in the 1990s.

The folks who made Long Live the Queen made another Princess Maker-styled game called Cute Knight several years ago. I played that a little bit, but at that same time, I also found a download of the never-released English translation of Princess Maker 2, which was done by some Working Designs alumni, and I preferred PM2. Too bad more of the official Princess Maker games didn't make it over, because PM4 (PS2 era) looked really good.

But the game industry wants to be taken as seriously as Hollywood - which will never happen, the results of "mainstream" gaming can be seen in the poisonous sea of cheap mobile cash-grab games - and when gaming does try to develop its own narrative, people bitch about how poor the plot is. I personally think most of the best story-driven games are fine in the context of the games themselves. They'd make shitty movies, to be sure, but they work just fine as games. Same way most movies make for shitty games. But then, if I wanted that kind of experience, I'd just watch a movie.

I never did think PC games, by and large, looked appreciably better than console games myself. I have a Steam account but I mainly use it for stuff like Ys and the upcoming Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky games. Most of the games I enjoy playing are only on consoles, and for cross-platform titles, I find it's easier to just buy the game on PS3 or PS4. I only buy laptops nowadays in any case and am thinking of dumping Windows for Apple when my current computer bites the dust, so you can see that gaming is not a priority for me when it comes to buying a PC.

And honestly, I don't see much improvement for games on PCs. For me, artistry counts far more than pixels and framerates. 60 FPS is nice, but as long as the game isn't a slideshow or isn't a cheeseball mobile game that looks like it was drawn by someone who flunked out of his third grade art class, I'm good.

The DS, like the PS2, was an unusually successful system, and I doubt any console will ever match either one of them. But the 3DS still has life in it. I think it will match the sales of the Game Boy Advance (80 million), and perhaps eventually match the original Game Boy (100 million). In any event, it's the best handheld gaming system I've ever played and really is a sort of iPod for (good) gaming.

The only part of the game I've really seen is the infamous scene where Dante trades F-bombs with the puking demon.

I would argue that the making of WW HD was probably more a result of the fact that it would probably take Nintendo far less effort to HD-paint a cartoony game like WW up than a game like Twilight Princess, so less money would be spent and the game would be more profitable. Cartoony games aren't as dependent on heavy-duty hardware to look good as more "realistic" games. I did mention that WW was somewhat vindicated, but the fact remains that the reception to WW at reveal, during development, and to a smaller degree, at launch, was hostile. Shigeru Miyamoto was completely shocked at the vitriol for the game. Negative feedback like that figures into future design decisions. I doubt we'll be seeing a revisit of Skyward Sword's design, either.

I actually would like to see a game focused around Princess Zelda herself, BTW. I envision Zelda wielding a whip in battle. No, get your mind out of the gutter and hear me out. I would propose that the whip be controlled by the right thumbstick to allow whip tricks a la Indiana Jones or some of the Castlevania games.

Wind Waker also illustrates why Nintendo doesn't take those kinds of risks more often. It got a very cold reception at its unveiling, especially in the US, which is the Zelda series' largest market by far, it was mocked constantly during development, and though it still sold well enough to make a decent profit, and was somewhat vindicated by history, it still was far less successful than Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, or Twilight Princess.  For the record, I thought WW was a great game, but Nintendo was taken aback by its reception from the gaming public. American gamers wanted the hyperrealistic Zelda they saw from the Gamecube demo and acted like Nintendo gave them the middle finger with WW.

For that matter, Majora's Mask is likewise a very divisive title in the Zelda fanbase.

Game Arts was really big on heartfelt personal stories for the characters in their RPGs. I don't have much experience with Grandia, though I have both Grandia and Grandia II, but these same traits were just as strong in the company's previous games, Lunar: Silver Star and Lunar: Eternal Blue, both of which remain among my all-time favorite video games.

Awesome, Ni no Kuni was my GotY as well. I also loved Fire Emblem: Awakening.