PixlBit

I remember Stratego from my childhood. 

Cage Match:

Currently, the finals are on hold pending an investigation. Besides the interference from Quest 64, there are also questions about whether Quest 64 was taking performance enhancing drugs. Quest 64 is the game that got a one-punch KO from Glass Joe. Quest 64 once lost a battle against those squirrel monsters on the deserted island in Final Fantasy VI that automatically die five seconds after the battle starts. Quest 64 once got its lunch money stolen by Lester the Unlikely. In light of these facts, an investigation is being conducted, and Congress is discussing holding hearings.  This is one of the worst scandals since Vince McMahon's 1994 doping scandal. Comparisons are even being drawn to the 1919 Black Sox Scandal. 

Chrono Cross, having showered for two solid days after its mini-vacation near the Stanfield Stockyards, demands answers, and is joined in this endeavor by Tetris and its former rival, Mario. 

When confronted by reporters from The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Norman Transcript, Quest 64 covered its face and ran into its home, while Chex Quest called the reporters "vultures."

When I first played Tactics in 1998, I did a lot of the "side quests" in the taverns. These would often unlock information on locations and artifacts in the earlier games of the series. At the time I played Tactics, I had only played VI and VII, and I might have rented IV from Blockbuster. So I didn't recognize any of these except what came from those games. Due to VII being pretty new and VI not being as popular in Japan as soms of the earlier games, most of these references came from 1, 2, 3, and 5. So that meant that i recognized very few of the references until I played V, which came out the following year as part of Anthology, or Origins. 9 had a lot of callbacks to older games as well (a lot of the Tactics staff worked on 9). It was interesting seeing how old some of the thematic elements of the PS1 games really were. I guess it would have felt the same seeing 8-bit Lynels for the first time if my first Zelda game had been Breath of the Wild or A Link Between Worlds, but I have been a Zelda fan since the first game released in the US. 

Apparenty ATGames did a Namco plug-in game that Namco felt was far short of its standards, and ATGames got a little snotty about their criticism. So I think Ms. Pac-Man is probably long gone.

I just wish Nintendo would hire Camelot to do a Golden Sun on the Switch. Or maybe Sega hire them to do a new Shining Force. 

On Stanfield, AZ: I grew up in that area, and if you ever somehow find yourself out there, which involves getting about ten miles off of both I-8 and I-10, let me just advise you to drive through the town on AZ Highway 84 with your windows rolled up and your vents closed.  The closest analogue I might suggest is the stockyards west of Amarillo.

I have only played the DS version. The Famicom version apparently did max out the abilities of the Famicom. 

That said, I still stand by my assertion that Dragon Quest was a much better series than Final Fantasy on the NES/Famicom.  My favorite NES FF was actually FF2, which is generally considered the worst of the series. It had the closest thing to a story of the NES FF games, and I liked its soundtrack better. 

The Taito Milestones collection was lacking. Where were Space Invaders, Bubble Bobble, Arkanoid? What about classics like Space Dungeon, Zoo Keeper, Rastan, Jungle Hunt?

I've heard that Bandai Namco is pretty much abandoning Ms. Pac-Man because of all the legal hoops they have to jump through with ATGames. That sucks. I'd have also liked to see Jr. Pac-Man on a collection. 

Opening Match: Mario is too busy getting busy with Peach and possibly Pauline, so he literally phones it in. As in, he phones the ring and tells them to declare him the winner. Which they do. Chrono Cross resigns itself to a consolation prize of a night for one at the Desert Sands Motel in Stanfield, Arizona, where it has only the company of a 1974 issue of Playboy and the smell of the Stanfield stockyards. 

Closing Match: Ched Quest is doing well, but Tetris gets a Tetris. The resulting block explosion squashes Chex Quest into the ceiling. Chex Quest sounds surprisingly like Doomguy when he dies. 

Mortal Kombat mania was huge. I was even more hyped for MK2 (Nothing.... NOTHING can prepare you.) Especially when I saw the SNES version in a playable demo.