PixlBit

Thanks for this, Nick.

Michael and I clicked from pretty much our first interaction back on 1up. We had some common interests outside of gaming and he trusted me enough that we could talk about family and othe issues. I was the first person to call him a great-horned owl fledgling, a description that he loved. We fell out of touch a while ago, something that I regret. He was a kind soul, I wish his inner demons hadn't gotten the best of him. I hope his next life is easier on him than this one was.

Looks like you've been busy. Now that I've heard the Ys game is good, I might have to look into that one. 

Fantasy Life i isn't really structureless, there's a story there, there's just more to do in between the story missions. Like doing quests for NPCs, and the various quests to raise your Life ranks. If you do end up playing it, let me know and I can give you some helpful tips that I wish I'd known when I started playing.

Always fun to see what you're up to. I think I may have played that Black Hole pinball table in real life on one of my tips to Boston to visit my uncle. He taught me how to play pinball, and knew where to find all the good tables.

The only Far Cry game I ever played was Blood Dragon. I loved the retro vibe from that game.

Pits are the pits. So are the stupid traps that spin you to a diffeent diection. Have you checked out the Wizardry remake yet? So good!

And did the Kirby controller work?

None of the games on the shareware disks my dad gave me were demos, either. They were full games.

You brought up a lot of the points my nephew Sawyer did about both the software and the technical difficulties with the mouse controls. I also will not be shelling out fo a new Pro Controller, since my old Pro Controller works just fine, other than not turning on the console. As my gaming area and my couch are very close to each other, I don't mind standing up to turn the console on with the power button. I will be getting a headset at some point, but not in the immediate future, because I need to buy a new car. My mechanic told me my old one isn't worth fixing.

Technically, Wizardry on the NES is a port of the original which came out in 1981 for the Apple II. This was my gateway drug to gaming when I played it fo the first time in 1982.

Dragon Warrior was a very grind heavy game, and that's saying something fo a series that is already grind heavy. I used to dash out, do three or four encounters in the immediate area around the castle, then dash back in. There are a couple of spots that you can wander into that aren't meant to be explored when you're lower level, but there's nothing that warns you about that, and you die with your first encounter. And money was soooo hard to come by, and not nearly enough equipment available to help you. I'm really looking forward to the remakes. Which means I should probably go back and finish off DQ 3 before they release 1&2, which 3 is the prequel to.

Someday, I will get to go to a Con.