PixlBit

Those were good years, with Twilight Princess, Okami, and FFXII in '06, VF5 Online, Rogue Galaxy, and Halo 3 (yes, I did play Halo for a time back then) in '07, and Valkyria Chronicles, Tales of Vesperia, and Fallout 3 in '08. Valkyria Chronicles was the game that got me to get a PS3.

As far as Twilight Princess goes, I definitely prefer the Gamecube version, and that's actually the canon version of the game, since it was originally a Gamecube game. The Wii U remake is based on the Gamecube version, including the maps being oriented in the same way as the Gamecube version rather than being flipped as in the Wii version.

I'm digital on small stuff like the Arcade Archives stuff and other little goodies like Celeste, but I buy cartridges for stuff like BotW and Xenoblade. I did get Puyo Puyo Tetris on cartridge though, but I tend to buy cartridges/discs when they're available. I tend to play the small arcadey stuff on the go and the big stuff at home with the Switch docked in TV mode. I will admit there are certain advantages to not having to switch carts, but with big games I'm not at that point.

Pressure Cooker was quite a novel little game for its time.

That was pretty good for a 2600 skiing game. Most of Activision's programmers at the time were people who had quit at Atari because Atari didn't credit them for their work. Maybe if these guys had stayed on at Atari, the 1983 crash wouldn't have happened. Oh, well, Nintendo was light-years better.

And then a lot of them left Activision for the same reason and formed companies like Acclaim, Accolade, and Absolute. All of these names were chosen so they'd be ahead of Activision in a phone book, kind of like Activision itself choosing a name that would appear before Atari.

You have been playing a lot of balloon games. My favorite balloon game is Balloon Fight, but that didn't come out until 1985. The arcade version is slated for release on the Switch, though, This game looks a lot like the Balloon Trip mode in the NES version. I guess it probably inspired it.

Too bad Square Enix doesn't release more Taito games as arcade classics.

You have been playing a lot of balloon games. My favorite balloon game is Balloon Fight, but that didn't come out until 1985. The arcade version is slated for release on the Switch, though,

Too bad Square Enix doesn't release more Taito games as arcade classics.

Which Bayonetta did you get? I kind of want to pick up Bayo 2.

One of the more interesting games of 2005 was Haunting Ground, a game made by Capcom as a successor to the Clock Tower series. It had a panicky heroine with few means to fight back other than her dog (and you could mistreat the dog badly enough to where it wouldn't help you), plus a lot of gruesome off-camera deaths.

Resident Evil 4 would have been my GOTY 2005... if Dragon Quest VIII hadn't come out in 2005. That game is still one of the best I've ever played. My new wife, myself, and my stepdaughter all played the game to completion and had our own save files.

Is it true that you paid Stormy Daniels $130,000 for her silence?

It was actually Zero Mission where I was referring to the hand-holding, and the statues that told you where to go next weren't skippable. Still, loved the movement mechanics of the game and the fact that you didn't have to spend hours re-finding the Ice and Wave Beams every time you wanted to change them.