PixlBit

It's amazing. I remember when CDs were first sold in stores. They looked so futuristic compared to vinyl records. When CD-ROM came out, game designers heralded it as a Godsend and quickly filled CD-ROMs with FMV movies. I also remember Laserdiscs.

Now, CDs look as out of date as 8-track tapes did, and Nintendo has gone back to cartridges for the Switch. Even Sony used cartridges for the Vita. In the gaming world, we've come full circle. Heck, even the iPod and Napster, which kicked off digital music, look like relics now.

I wanted a Sega CD back in the day for the Working Designs games: Lunar, Lunar 2, Vay, and Popful Mail. But I was still a kid and my parents weren't going to spring for a $150 add-on for a $150 console plus games, so I got a SNES and got Final Fantasy III (VI) on it. I preordered the Lunars when they came out on PS1, and they are still among my favorites. I even still have the complete packaging for both of them. I did try Sonic CD later on. Playing Final Fantasy VI for 16 hours straight when I first got it was the closest I ever got to a drug trip, LOL. I was wandering around the yard like a zombie. My mother was yelling at me about sitting up all night playing games. I think. My memory was kind of iffy on that incident.

I rooted for the Eagles because the Cardinals were long gone. :(

Nintendo had some awesome arcade games in the 80s. Most of my favorite arcade games were made by Nintendo: Donkey Kong (the first video game I ever played, no less), Mario Bros, DK Junior, Popeye, and Punch-Out!! They also had arcade versions of a lot of NES games like Balloon Fight and Super Mario Bros.

That was an awesome time in gaming. I played SFII for awhile, then got into Mortal Kombat. I had the censored SNES version of MKI and then I got the awesome for its time SNES version of MKII. I wasn't overly impressed with KI, though, I knew Nintendo wanted it as a sort of tech demo for the "Ultra 64." The announcer sounded like he was on a meth high. I used to hang around arcades playing MKII, KI, and Primal Rage. Still did the occasional SFII match. I also saw the first Virtua Fighter, didn't really get into that series until VF2, now it's my favorite fighting game series.

1994 was awesome in particular. I know everybody talked about Donkey Kong Country, but my favorite games of that year were Super Metroid and FInal Fantasy (VI) III. FFVI was my first Final Fantasy. I played it for 16 hours straight the first time I played it. My mother was pissed off at me for doing that. I think. My brain was pretty fried by that point. I was hearing the music when I went outside shambling around like a zombie. Fortunately we lived in the middle of nowhere so nobody was there to see me but my mom.

By far my favorite game of the time, though, was A Link to the Past. That game was absolutely incredible, and even my mom was impressed with it. Link's Awakening was pretty good, too.

I remember when MK3 came out in arcades, but it was kind of a letdown after MKII. They dropped Kitana and Mileena, my two favorites from MKII, and none of the new characters filled the void. I also wasn't crazy about the Killer Instinct-style combo system. I did get the SNES version, which was pretty good for its time, or the 1990s techno vibe the game gave off. Other than Chrono Trigger, 1995 was kind of a "meh" year in gaming for me compared to '94. I wasn't interested in the PS1 or Saturn launches and the 16-bit systems were starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel as they wound down. Other than CT and MK3, the other 1995 games I really played were NBA Jam TE, Judge Dredd (which wasn't bad, but not exciting), and the SNES version of Revolution-X, which was terrible. The one interesting thing I remember from 1995 other than CT was Square's demo of 3-D Final Fantasy VI characters battling as their way of showing off what they wanted to do in FFVII. But that was also around the time that they announced they were jumping ship from Nintendo to the PlayStation.

When I was growing up, I went to a birthday party with one of my friends from school, and he had a Missile Command arcade machine in his house.

I read that the designers of Missile Command had nightmares about nuclear war while they were making it. Although the 2600 version's documentation painted the game as defending a space colony against an alien invasion, to soften the theme for kids, the cities in the arcade version were meant to represent cities in California (where the designers lived) under Soviet attack.

I played a knockoff of Missile Command written in BASIC, where the cities were cities in Oklahoma.

The entire industry is at a point of diminishing returns, not just graphically but in terms of gameplay. Even VR at this point is nothing more than a monitor strapped to your face. For me, VR won't be real until I can look down at myself and see Link standing there instead of me, LOL.

As awesome as it is, I'm certain that Breath of the Wild was inspired by Nintendo looking at the huge success of Skyrim. I will say that BotW, however, is executed far better in terms of gameplay mechanics than Bethesda's offerings, and when you put everything together it is truly an amazing package that is greater than the sum of its parts. Crafting isn't as tedious as it is in other games, and I actually want to explore every corner of this version of Hyrule.

Just looked up Nex Machina. Looks pretty cool, like a contemporary Robotron/Smash TV. They even had Eugene Jarvis on board as a consultant. Might have to check it out.

I can't do a blog a day even under the best circumstances. But glad your job is keeping you busy and making you some money.

I might have seen a Super Pac-Man machine from time to time. I had the Atari 8-bit version of Super Pac-Man, and now I have it on Namco Museum Volume 2.

I've switched from Netflix to Hulu. All the content I liked on Netflix is going to Hulu, and Netflix is losing more content than it's gaining. The only thing on Netflix I would really want to keep it for is F is for Family, and that gets new seasons so sporadically that it isn't worth it anymore.

I'm really loving my Switch. I haven't been this excited about a new game console in ten years, but this is almost like when I first got my SNES, which was the first home console I actually had. Breath of the Wild is amazing, and one little gem I'm enjoying is the arcade version of Mario Bros, which has never been officially released before.

I'm rolling my eyes at Phil the Groundhog. I live in Arizona, and other than a couple of cool days, it's like summer never ended here this year. We were already back in the 80s in January.