I had those Tifa and Aerith Bandai figues back in the 1990s. May still have them packed away somewhere.
I've mostly been playing No Man's Sky with a side of Pokemon Scarlet and Persona 5 Royal.
The musical resemblance probably was intentional, and like a lot of video game companies, Capcom hoped to change it just enough to fly under the radar, or that the movie was so old by that point that the copyright wouldn't be enforced.
John Carmack, the original producer of Doom, once observed that Bobby Prince, the composer, was also a lawyer who knew how to change songs just enough to avoid copyright lawsuits. A lot of Doom II's tracks are basically instrumental covers of Alice in Chains, Slayer, Black Sabbath, and of course Pantera, from id's home state of Texas (The level 23 music, based on AiC's "Them Bones," is the most notorious example.)
When it comes to 2-D platformers, if I had to do a top 5, they'd all be Metroid and Mario games, with Super Metroid coming out on top. My favorite series after those would be Castlevania.
One unusual platformer I enjoyed was Mischief Makers on the N64. I hope they consider putting that on Nintendo Switch Online.
Stage Select:
My proposal is an unusual one: I would like to see a Project A-Ko RPG, where you play as A-Ko, explore Graviton City, and battle B-Ko and her minions, ultimately facing off against the Cygnians to protect C-Ko. Or, if you find C-Ko really annoying, you could just let the Cygnians have her. This could be done by Atlus or by CyberConnect2, the makers of Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, or by the folks responsible for the upcoming One Piece Odyssey. In the movies, A-Ko's parents are implied to be Superman and Wonder Woman, while B-Ko's father is based on Tony Stark.
Cage Match:
Probably going to give it to Spider-Man 2018 due to technological improvements and a better developer, but honestly, never played either game.
I haven't seen a Marble Slab since I lived in OK. Marble Slabs are based in Texas, Cold Stone is based in AZ. Cold Stone was also successfully able to go national. I saw one in Times Square, over a decade after my dad and I went to the very first one in Tempe, AZ.
We actually have Kura Sushi here in my area, and I've eaten there. I had sushi and one of those sweet red bean dessert buns. Cold Stone Creamery is local to Arizona (our outgoing governor was its president for a time), and I like their Mario stuff. They have a Mario Kart cake that I would have been all over when I was a kid. I don't eat ice cream as much as I did when my metabolism was better, sadly.
Fates sounds like it was developed with the idea of trying to cater to both casual and hardcore SRPG fans. Birthright is more forgiving and structured more like Awakening, while Conquest is tougher and more rigidly structured, with less room for error. I'm guessing they probably took inspiration from the Zelda Oracle games in that regard.
I've gotta say, I'm more excited for Atari 50 than I should be. It seems to have a fantastic selection of games and content. Other than Solaris, I was pleased to see Miner 2049er, a favorite of the Atari 8-bit line, on board. They also made a new Yars' Revenge game, and Swordquest: Airworld, which was planned to complete the Swordquest quadrilogy but was canceled due to the 1983 crash and Warner selling Atari to Jack Tramiel. Atari Karts for the Jaguar is also on there, starring Bentley Bear from Crystal Castles.
Its music was composed by George "The Fat Man" Sanger, who composed for a lot of late-80s/early 90s CRPGs and adventure games, including Wing Commander, Ultima Underworld, and 7th Guest/11th Hour.
At oe time, Fire Emblem's entire future rode upon Awakening, and it almost didn't get a US release. I'm glad that we got Three Houses and are about to get Engage.
The only Etrian Odyssey game I've played was Untold: The Millennium Girl. I wish the series had continued on Switch, since it's one of the closest things to a continuation of Wizardry that we have.
My current games are the Switch versions of Persona 5 Royal and Bayonetta 3. Next week I'm picking up the Atari 50 Collection. It has games fromt the 8-bit line (best gaming machines of the 80s other than the NES), Lynx, and Jaguar. They even got Doug Neubauer to release the 2600's swan song, Solaris, for this one. He somehow managed to work it so that he owns Solaris and Atari has to have his consent to release it, even though they own his previous work, Star Raiders.
I had Fall of the Foot Clan on Game Boy. They actually did a good job within the limits of the GB hardware of replicating some of the spirit and feel of the arcade games. The home ports of the arcade games on SNES and NES were amazing. I never played Manhattan Project, but Konami clearly understood that isometic beat-em-ups were a perfect medium for the Turtles.
I just wish they could make a deal to get Simpsons and X-Men onto Switch and other current systems. I'm kind of tempted by The Simpsons Arcade 1UP.
