Yeah, those are the ones I'm talking about. I read all of those when I was about 12, even though they aren't really meant for kids. I even had the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy text adventure game made by Infocom.
I missed out on all the Disney Afternoon stuff the first time around. My access to a NES back in the day was through my best friend who lived a mile down the road from me, and we were more into stuff like Zelda, Metroid, Bionic Commando, and Faxanadu. I did want to try DuckTales in particular, the closest I've gotten to that one is Shovel Knight. I played a game called Mickey Mousecapade on the NES. Hudson made that one.
I actually enjoyed a lot of Midway's games, especially Defender, Joust, and Root Beer Tapper. I've also played the original Budweiser-licensed Tapper.
For my part, I have a lot of classic arcade compilations from companies Namco, Capcom, SNK, and Sega. My big wish in retro game compilations though, is a collection of Nintendo's arcade hits, especially Donkey Kong and Mario Bros, which are both watered down from their arcade originals, and of course the NES version of DK is missing the Cement Factory level. It's just kind of mind-blowing that between these old games and home versions of more recent games like SF, MK, Virtua Fighter, and Tekken, that I have more arcade games at home than my local mall did back in the heyday of arcades.
Think Yourself Thin and Turn that Frown Upside Down! Just kidding.
I've been rereading Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker Trilogy (of five books). Those are perennial favorites of mine.
PS1. Just on the RPGs alone it probably had my favorite library of games, plus all the fighting games and titles like Resident Evil. It was the first non-Nintendo console I ever had.
As for N64, Super Mario 64 was fantastic.The Zeldas were groundbreaking, but I enjoyed Twilight Princess and Wind Waker far more than I did Ocarina of Time or Majora's Mask. There were also a couple of under-the-radar gems like Ogre Battle 64, Harvest Moon 64, and Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon, but the N64 is my least favorite Nintendo system of all time (setting aside Virtual Boy, of course).
I've been through the ringer on jobs myself. The job that moved me to Maryland turned out to be a bust, so I got a new one. That job came with its own problems, and I was not a happy camper.
Eventually, given the soft job market in Maryland combined with the insane cost of living in Maryland, I started looking elsewhere and ended up back in Arizona, which I like much better. It was crazy that Arizona employers are calling me right and left where Maryland employers moved at the pace of a tired snail. I'd get e-mails from prospective MD employers three months later saying that I had been declined for a position (my unsent response: "No shit, Sherlock.") I'll miss the fun places on the East Coast... but on the other hand, I now have the West Coast in my backyard. And as a bonus, I'm getting more involved in gaming again. I'm actually finishing games again, and Arizona is home to some of the best video game stores I've ever seen.
Zelda for sure (No Twitter for me, that place is scummier than any porn site hosting legal porn). It's my favorite video game series period. Love the enemies, weapons, swordfighting, the exploration, pretty much everything.
Also love Metroid, Mario, and Fire Emblem. I'd be hard pressed to find a Nintendo series I didn't like.
I got a N64 with Super Mario 64 in Christmas of 1996, and of course I was looking forward to what was then called Zelda 64. I also really enjoyed Mario Kart 64 and Star Fox 64.
For me, though, the N64's undoing was the almost complete lack of RPGs. Earthbound 64 (Mother 3) and Tales of Phantasia 2 (which later became Tales of Symphonia on Gamecube) were the only ones announced early on and both of those got re-routed to other systems. Games like Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon, Harvest Moon 64, and Ogre Battle 64 did eventually come out, but I couldn't resist the siren's song that was Final Fantasy VII and ended up buying a PlayStation a couple years later.
I don't put too much stock in professional critics anymore. It seems like most of the old guard critics went on to other things or left the industry altogether, and I'm not impressed with the new crop of Youtube "stars". I will say that a lot of the games I loved were 70-80 range on Metacritic, and I didn't like a lot of 90+ games on MC (my feelings on MC itself are another topic for another day). Unless a game is obviously broken (which sadly, quite a few Kickstarter games ended up being broken, which makes me worry about the only KS game I'm really hyped for, Shenmue III), whether it's good or not is a subjective opinion dependent on each gamer's tastes. I haven't heard about Y-L being in the "obviously broken" category, so I imagine that if you liked Banjo, you'll probably enjoy Yooka-Laylee.
I kind of hate the super experts in fighting game lobbies, but I really pissed people off in MKX with my Kitana. She is my main in every Mortal Kombat game. In MKX, I actually managed to clear out an entire room by playing cheap and dirty with Kitana (a lot of spamming midair fans like a machine gun, things like that.) People were bitching about it, but I was rather enjoying myself. :)
I'll probably pick Tekken 7 as my go to fighter this year, but I really wish Sega would make Virtua Fighter 6. That's a long shot, but then again, Sega's been pretty damn good over the past year and showing encouraging signs of listening to fans (keep in mind they also own Atlus and the Persona franchise).
I remember Bulletstorm during its initial release, but never really played it.
Persona 5 is awesome.
