I like them, but I can see that. Plus most shmups these days are of the extreme bullet hell variety. They're fun - Giga Wing, a game whose first home release was on the Dreamcast, is part of the third bundle in this collection - but that's too much stuff to keep track of.
I think that was the case for Sega for pretty much its entire existence. They did get EA, Namco, and SNK out of it, and unique Castlevania and Contra games out of it though.
It did not go over well in Japan for that reason. The NES version bowdlerized all the WWII stuff. The ending of the arcade version shows you proudly flying the American flag while a very Capcom-esque rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner plays. The NES version has the pilot calling home to his wife, Nancy, saying he'll be at the party on time. No mention of WWII or either the US or Japanese militaries.
I remember Sony had a rapid-fire barrage of potential mascot games going in 1998. Tomba, Blasto, and Jersey Devil. Spyro came out in the fall of 1998. I was too busy with FF7, RE2, and Tekken 3 at the time but i do remember them somewhat.
Rival Schools was one of the great unsung gems of the PS1 generation. I'd like to see Capcom bring it back on modern consoles. My favorite fighter was Kyoko, the school nurse.
Bust-a-Groove was interesting, but I mostly remember being excited abou the idea of PS1 Enix RPGs being released in the US (as they eventually were.)
I did have a SNES, so I did get to reap some of the bounty of 16 bit RPGs, at least in the later years of the SNES lifespan, which included FF6, Earthbound, Chrono Trigger, Super Mario RPG, and Harvest Moon. I'd hoped the N64 would continue thaf legacy, but it was pretty much a bust when it came to RPGs. Pity they couldn't finish Earthbound 64. The Gamecube made up for it somewhat.
Enix published a lot of SNES RPGs, including the well-regarded Ogre Battle, but unfortunately Dragon Quest 5 and 6 weren't among them. That's too bad, because Dragon Quest 5 in particular is as good as the Square RPGs. It would have also been nice if Nintendo had brought over the SNES Fire Emblem games.
That said, the Genesis did provide two enduring RPG classics: Lunar: The Silver Star and Lunar: Eternal Blue, which were both Sega CD games.
Holding out on the Switch version of that that comes out in a couple of months. I buy most games on Switch these days.
Stage Select:
Narshe from Final Fantasy VI. The game opens with Terra and her captors marching on Narshe, and the town's atmosphere conveys a wintery town powered and warmed by steam pretty well.
Snowpeak Ruins in Twilight Princess. One of the best dungeons in the entire series. It opens with Link doing a snowboarding stage, and doing it better than Cloud did a few years earlier. The mansion is the dungeon, but it's more organically integrated into the game and doesn't scream "I'm a dungeon!", which is part of why I like it.
Pretty much all of the snowy areas in Breath of the Wild, which includes Rito Village. That captured the exploration aspect of the game pretty nicely and really made you feel lost in a snowy wasteland. And then you run into a Lynel.
Cage Match:
Going with Revolution-X on this one. I was a fan of Aerosmith, and the game was pretty fun in the arcade. Unfortunately, the SNES just couldn't handle it. That version was incredibly slow and buggy (and I got it for my birthday instead of Chrono Trigger no less.) I did play the PS1 version much later on, and it was a decent port. But with poor motion capture and effects, Area 51 made Revolution-X look like Time Crisis by comparison.
My man, I will drink a toast to you and your mother. That is fantastic news that the surgery was enough for your mother to beat cancer. I was thinking about you.
Definitely remember Aero the Acro-Bat. And Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel.
Only from magazine ads, though.
