PixlBit

My family had a Heathkit TV that my dad built. I think he still has it somewhere. He didn't build a video game into it, but he did build a cable box into it.

It's funny, you and I seem to have had the same perception of video games back in the day. I just thought it was cool to make stuff move on a TV screen. It used to be a real treat when my cousin would let me play his 2600 when we went to visit.

In my area, our video game channel was 4 as channel 3 was an actual channel (our ABC affiliate if I remember correctly).

The only two games I'm really interested in achievements on are Final Fantasy VII (first platinum) and Valkyria Chronicles HD. Most achievements/trophies are boring.

Win some, lose some. I've filled up my PS4's stock HDD and I'd rather be able to plug in an external HDD rather than going through the trouble of futzing around with replacing the internal drive.

Stage Select: My top 3 cancelled games.

1. Earthbound 64 (Mother 3 prototype): This is always the one that hurt the most. It looked great for the late 90s, coming close to Final Fantasy VII, and would have helped to fil a huge need for RPGs on the N64. Sadly, it was a 64DD game, and instead of converting it to a cartridge game - which would have been feasible late in the N64's life cycle, given that they were able to stuff Resident Evil 2 into a 64MB cartridge -  they gave up on it and ended up releasing it on the Game Boy Advance instead. I guess by that point I had completely moved on to the PS1, but I would still have loved to play it. Hopefully the GBA Mother 3 will make it out on the Switch.

2. Mega Man Legends 3: It sounds sacrilegious, but Mega Man Legends was the only part of the Mega Man franchise I ever really got into. I had the first game on PS1 and have since downloaded MML2 and The Misadventures of Tron Bonne on PSV TV. This game looked awesome and it was frustrating how Capcom just pulled the plug on the project.

3. Socks the Cat Rocks The Hill: Honestly, a game starring the then First Cat sounded interesting, even more so when the team released the ROM online.

Chrono Crossing:

My favorite game of 1999 was Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete. I wanted Lunar ever since I saw the ads for the Sega CD version, and I was excited when the clerk at Electronics Boutique told me it was being remade and released, and on the PS1 instead of the Saturn no less. I would probably have bought a Saturn just to play it though. The other games of 1999 I enjoyed were Final Fantasy VIII and Resident Evil 3: Nemesis.

I'd have to say my favorite 1999 game was Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete. Wanting it for five years (when the Sega CD version first appeared in ads in gaming magazines) and getting it fulfilled after all that time was memorable.

Other than that, it was Final Fantasy VIII, which I bought on September 9 instead of a Dreamcast. I will say that I liked the Dreamcast version of SoulCalibur though.

I feel like Rockstar abandoned the original point of GTA, which used to be about having sandbox fun. From IV on, though, it's become rather pretentious, while not fixing a lot of the problems that have plagued the series throughout its run. But since that's what apparently sells, I guess that's what we're getting from now on.

As far as the meth lab plotline, Breaking Bad actually premiered that year, in January, so no, I didn't come up with it first. That said, I didn't hear about Breaking Bad until some years after its first season, so my storyline was a coincidence based on real life. I lived in Oklahoma, which for many years was one of the biggest hotbeds of meth labs. Incidentally, Oklahoma borders both Texas and New Mexico, where Breaking Bad is set. It was all too common on the news to hear of meth lab busts as well as the occasional meth lab explosion, mostly in poor neighborhoods or trailer parks, though there was the occasional bust in more affluent neighborhoods. In any case, meth labs turned the homes they were run from into miniature toxic waste sites, often with young kids living in them, while explosions contaminated whole neighborhoods. Oklahoma became one of the first states to implement the now-familiar laws requiring photo ID to purchase pseudoephedrine, a decongestant and key ingredient in home meth cooking. These laws originated in another state with rampant meth use, Tennessee. Meth lab busts dropped significantly in Oklahoma when the laws were implemented. However, since Texas didn't adopt these laws until later, meth cookers simply moved their operations from Oklahoma to Texas, or at least made trips to Texas to buy pseudoephedrine.  I knew all too many people who sported the dental damage and the lisp associated with years of heavy methamphetamine smoking. :(

It's funny how we've come full circle on media - sort of.

When CD-ROMs first came out, they seemed like a godsend. 650MB of storage compared to 1.44MB for 3 1/2" floppies or 64MB for the biggest N64 cartridge ever made, the N64 port of Resident Evil 2. Heck, most HDDs at the time CD-ROMs came out sported less than 100MB. Nintendo's failure to embrace CD-ROMs is universally seen as the unforced error that handed the video game market to Sony for almost every generation from the 5th gen onward.

Now flash memory continues to decrease in price to where there are flash cards with the capacity of multiple Blu-Ray discs. BD-ROMs are still cheaper per GB, but that difference is rapidly fading and I don't see Sony or MS making much noise about using 4K Blu-Ray discs for games. Meanwhile, though discs have improved, their drawbacks are still evident.

Sony went from optical discs on the PSP to cartridges on the Vita. Nintendo is going from optical discs on the Wii U to cartridges on the Switch. Unless the next PlayStation or Xbox go digital only (assuming those machines ever come out, that is), I wouldn't be surprised to see them go to cartridges.

Most stores I've seen here, even big box stores like Target and Walmart, have the cashiers do the bagging. Come to think of it, the only place I've seen baggers in the past few years is at the base commissary at Tinker AFB when I went with my dad to fill his meds at the base hospital. I've never lived in an area that didn't allow paper bags, though. I have some of the reusable bags but never remember to bring them.

Yeah, I saw a couple of reviews of the Super Famicom games and a few pieces of Fire Emblem fan art in NP in the 1990s. I always wanted to play FE Thracia 776 in English.

Awesome series. I just wish they'd kept making console games like Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn. That's one reason I'm hyped about the Switch and why I like the PSTV. Handheld is nice, but I'd really like the option to play on the big screen at home.