PixlBit

There's only one game for Chrono Crossing that comes to mind for 1985: Super Mario Bros. It was really awesome for its time. My friends, cousins, and I spent hours at a time on this game. What else can you say about the game that single-handedly resurrected home video games from the dead in the USA?

And yes, I did indeed have a number of completely inappropriate responses to the last question. But you gotta admit, that question was pretty out there. Listening to the podcast, it is good to know that my worries about going over the line were completely unfounded. :)

GTA is the one series that really stands out to me when I think of stagnation. Personally, I always wanted to see GTA take on Texas, with all the tropes and stereotypes people have of Texas.

There are two reasons EA stays in business: the NFL and FIFA allowing EA to hold a monopoly on their licenses. The NBA, NHL, and MLB all allow competition between developers, and I wish FIFA and NFL would do the same.

Nintendo: Doomed since 1889.

Part of the reason that EA pushes this narrative is that they want all of their games to be services that people pay for on an ongoing basis, and whose use EA can control (this is the same company that tried disabling games you bought based on you getting banned from EA's forums!). They want to have perpetual revenue streams through DLC and microtransactions, but not every game is going to be a Call of Duty or a Clash of Clans. Most online-focused games are pretty barren a couple of weeks after release with the exceptions of a handful of eternally popular franchises such as Call of Duty, Halo, or Blizzard's games.

Congratulations on the new baby!

Visceral Games is just the latest in EA's graveyard. I hate what EA does to the industry. Origin is gone. Maxis is gone. Bullfrog is gone. I have no doubt that we'll be reading about Bioware's closure at some point, maybe not now.

Sadly, there are two reasons why EA gets away with this crap without going bankrupt: the NFL and FIFA. A stream of guaranteed Madden dollars and FIFA euros keep EA afloat, and they seem to think that every property they have can be turned into a perpetual cash cow. They honestly seem to be trying the mobile microtransaction-based "pay to win" model on console gaming. I wish the NFL and FIFA would open their licenses to other publishers, because that would really break EA's stranglehold on the industry. "EA Sports" isn't even a big brand anymore because other companies made better NBA and MLB games and pushed EA out of those markets. Yet they are allowed to continue to hold a monopoly on both kinds of football. Sigh.

I don't really have a Halloween game of the year. Castlevania is usually what comes to mind for that. Or Ghosts 'n' Goblins. Or Zombies Ate My Neighbors.

No Twitter account, but #Delaware.

 Stage select: What game characters I would like to eat.

 1. My first choice is Tif.... errr, never mind, I'll just show myself out now.

 How about Cuccos? I'll bet they taste just like chicken.

2. That giant pig in Wind Waker. That's a lotta bacon, ham, and sausage right there. Hopefully some good ribs.

3. Maybe the cake boss in Super Mario RPG? Not sure how a living cake would taste, especially after being jumped on by Mario.

Chrono Crossing:

Starflight (PC). This is the only time you'll ever see me naming an EA game as a game of the year. I didn't play it until a few years after it came out, but it was an amazing game. It was set in the year 4620, a thousand years after the fall of a galactic civilization, and you were charged with exploring the universe. You outfitted a ship, trained a crew in five different jobs (science, engineering, navigation, communication, and medicine), with the ability to pick from five different species (Human, the insectoid Velox, reptilian Thrynn, plant-like Elowan, or androids). You could explore star systems, individual planets, and nebulae looking for life forms, minerals, and treasures that would enhance your ship or fill in the game's backstory. There were multiple alien races to communicate, trade, and do battle with. Eventually, you would find a certain familiar planet within a "dead zone." Shortly after you start your game, you are also given an impending crisis to resolve that will require you to explore carefully to find all the tools you need to save your home world. Most space video games were space battle games inspired by the Star Wars craze in the early 80s; this game was definitely more Star Trek than Star Wars.

I didn't pick up a lot of my favorite game series until they had several iterations spanning over 10 years. I didn't get into Final Fantasy until the SNES was on its way out the door to be replaced by the N64. I didn't get into Fallout until the Bethesda games. I've been playing Mario and Zelda from their earliest incarnations, but I still enjoy their newer stuff. And Mario and Zelda games are made so that no prior knowledge of the series is needed. The fact is, people being what they are, younger gamers aren't going to get excited playing a game made in 1985-1987, but they can still appreciate those same mechanics in Breath of the Wild or the latest round of Mario games.

Gaming companies cannot survive by simply catering to the same cohort of people born from the mid 70s to the mid 80s.

What about Plumbers Don't Wear Ties? What's special about that one?