PixlBit

Stage Select: 

1998 Games of the Year

1. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Visually impressive, with plenty to do and an extremely high level of polish. Not only unmatched by anything else released in 1998, but largely unmatched by anything released in 5th gen. 

2. Xenogears. A demo was included as a surprise bonus with Parasite Eve, which got me interested. Xenogears quickly became one of Square's most memorable games of the generation, with its lengthy (if sometimes cutscene-heavy) story, interesting characters, and mech combat. The only downside was Disc 2, but I was invested enough in the world to stick it out to the end. Unfortunately, the team apparently used Disc 2 as a model for the development of Xenosaga, which would become one of my biggest disappointments of 6th gen. Thankfully, they completely turned the ship around with Xenoblade, which I felt was the Xenogears successor I had wanted all along.

3. Resident Evil 2. Capcom's best offering of the generation. Took everything that made Resident Evil good and cranked it up to 11, with two character paths that required their own discs, and two of the most memorable playable characters in the franchise's history. I can still hear the save room theme in my head.

4. Parasite Eve. A Square horror RPG set in New York City with nods to Final Fantasy here and there. Nowadays it's faded into obscurity, but it was a pretty big deal then, enough that Madonna was said to have sought the US movie rights to it. Square also used it to develop the graphics they would eventually use for FF8 and FF9. Two other reasons this game was memorable to me was the Xenogears demo that came with it that sold me on Xenogears, and it was the first game I ever pre-ordered.

5. Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon. This was my favorite third party N64 game, not that the pool of third party N64 games was all that big. Still, it had great music, charming graphics, and it did 3-D Zelda before Ocarina of Time did. My most wanted NSO N64 game is Mystical Ninja.

Cage Match: 

Dunno. I definitely like Shaq better, but Kobe played a better game, so I'm going to have to give it to Kobe's game.

These ninja reviews aren't going to try to assassinate me, are they?

It was rather esoteric, and as Cary mentioned above, that was the reason why it came with the strategy guide. NoA was well aware that it might be difficult to figure out what to do next. And that ultimately helped hurt sales and critical reception. A PDF version of the strategy guide is available for download from Nintendo itself. 

The famous Mother 3 fan translation was largely spearheaded by Clyde 'Tomato' Mandelin. He sent a letter to Nintendo promising that if Nintendo used the fan translation in an official release, that he would not attempt to seek royalties from Nintendo. Nintendo declined. From a legal standpoint, Nintendo's stance makes sense. Allowing outside parties into your IP and patents and whatnot opens up a huge can of worms, which Nintendo found out in its early days as a game manufactuer with its conflict with Ikegami. But it would be great to have an official localized Mother 3 on the Switch. It's telling that Nintendo, which has a reputation for being litigious, has largely left the Fan Translation alone. They don't want to deal with the potential controversy of releasing Mother 3, especially with the political environment in the United States being what it is, and are content to let this matter rest, even though Mother 3's cult status might make it a commercial hit. Earthbound was one of the most-downloaded games on Wii U. Earthbound was included in the US version of the SNES Classic, but not the Japanese version, and I've read that Mother 3 was rather divisive in Japan. 

I game hoard more than I should, because it seems like some games become impossible to find physically if you don't pre-order them or order them shortly after release. My most recent acquisitions were Advance Wars and the Switch version of GrimGrimoire OnceMore. 

However, I eventually did splurge on something that I'd been waffling on: the Zelda OLED Switch. I mostly play docked (on a OLED TV, no less)  so I kind of waffled on investing in a OLED Switch. My other Switch is a launch-year Switch. But I couldn't resist it. However, I will keep my OG Switch, because not only does it still work just fine, but it was one of the last Christmas presents my dad gave me, and it saw me through a lot of heartbreaking situations over the past three years.

To be fair, Earthbound did take a critical and commercial pounding in 1995 when it first came out, often for those same reasons. I was honestly amazed that it developed the cult status it did after the fact, but I am glad that Nintendo at least includes it in SNES collections nowadays. The critical and commercial reception it got was upsetting to Nintendo Japan and the US localizer, Marcus Lindblom, who really put his all into the localizaiton, which was probably the best RPG localization out there at the time. Hopefully he's found satisfaction in seeing the game achieve cult status. 

I have a bootleg cartridge version of Mother 3. My primary means of playing it is through the Game Boy Player for my Gamecube.  Great game... but it makes me wish Nintendo had completed Mother 3 for the N64. Not only would that have fulfilled a yawning niche in the N64's library, but it's possible that it might have been more likely to be released over here, simply because Nintendo was more willing to take chance on Japan-only franchises in order to attract people back to the N64 and Gamecube - that's the environment that brought us Animal Crossing, Advance Wars, and Fire Emblem, after all. 

Stage Select:

I'm going to open this one with a tribute to a female game developer who was taken from us far too soon: Rieko Kodama, a longtime Sega producer whose credits included Phantasy Star, Skies of Arcadia, and 7th Dragon, and whose DNA was also apparent in other Sega titles such as Sakura Wars and Valkyria Chronicles. The gaming world lost a legend that day.

Carol Shaw, the designer of Activision's best 2600/5200 game, River Raid. In the back of its 2600 manuals, Activision would include a brief bio of the game's main designer, including a quote from the designer, which was a response to the way the founders' former employer, Atari, refused to credit individual designers. It was neat of them to put a human face to the people who made my video game, and Shaw especially so since even as a kid I knew that video games were a hugely male-dominated space. 

My favorite female video game character is Samus Aran, the video gaming world's equivalent of Sigourney Weaver, for battling parasitic energy monsters, giant space dragons, and even an interstellar terrorist organization of bird-people. 

After Samus is one Tifa Lockhart. Love her character design and her characterization in the world of Final Fantasy VII.

Edelgard von Hresveig, emperor of the Adrestian Empire. Edelgard was right. That is all.

Kitana, my favorite fighting game character, and her badass razorblade fans. Fun fact: when I was a teenager, I sent a fan-letter through an address EGM provided to Katalin Zamiar, who portrayed Kitana and Mileena in MK2.  Look, I was 16 years old.

Cage Match:

Breath of the Wild would win over pretty much every other game out there in a cage match. But Dragon Quest XI is definitely the best "loser" cage match game I've ever played. Both of these games were absolutely phenomenal. BotW was the 3-D Zelda game I'd been hoping for ever since the series went to 3-D. DQ11 was an almost perfect distillation of everything I love about RPGs (I don't use the term JRPG, since I agree with what Yoshi-P said about the term and have agreed with it since the days of the PS3/Wii/360). So, Breath of the Wild, but Dragon Quest 11 deserves credit for going into the cage with the best of the best. In the words of George Foreman's head in Futurama, my memory's not what it used to be, but I think the entire earth was destroyed.  

I have a Gamecube with a GB Player, so I'm good with that. 

Power Wash simulator probably appeals to people who were/are fans of Super Mario Sunshine, since FLUDD was a sort of power-washing machine. Didn't the PS version of PWS have a Final Fantasy crossover?

You can hoof it in DC, MoCo, PG County, and NoVA pretty decently due to the Metro. Baltimore, unfortunately, doesn't have comprehensive mass transit like DC, NYC, or Boston do. Most of the city is serviced by an inadequate bus system. There is light rail, but it mostly connects Owings Mills and Timonium to Downtown, with a couple of stops in Glen Burnie. It does connect to Penn Station and the Acela line that services the BosWash corridor. 

When I lived there, I was as stranded without a car there as I would be in Phoenix. And that's a shame, because the city really needs something more than a bus that comes by every few hours to service a lot of its poorer neighborhoods.

There is definitley lots of interesting stuff there. One of my favorite places there was Boring, home of the Boring Volunteer Fire Department and the Boring United Methodist Church. It's northwest of Baltimore.  

I lived in Baltimore for a couple of years. Expensive AF, especially car insurance. Not to mention your car pretty much has to be driven right off the dealer lot to the nearest inspection station to have any hope of passing Maryland's motor vehicle inspection.