PixlBit

I can relate on care registrations. Maryland has a godawful car registration process where not only do you have to pay a shit ton of money, your car has to pass a 60-point inspection where unless your car is fresh off the assembly line, you're going to be paying hundreds of dollars for the most petty repairs possible. You know why my car failed inspection? Its back bumper cover got dinged while I was at a doctor's appointment and stuck 1/16 of an inch (I measured it) out. The rationale was that, "well, a woman could be walking alongside your car and get her skirt caught on my bumper." If someone's that close to a moving car, they've got worse problems to deal with than a slightly dinged bumper. But that's what the state's law says, and I had to pay $170 before they'd sign a passing inspection certificate. That was before paying several hundred dollars to the state for Maryland license plates.

Fun fact: Parasite Eve was the first game I ever reserved (at Electronics Boutique, which is now Gamestop and is still there). I still have my original copy, too. I enjoyed it quite a bit and remember that the US rights to a PE movie were bought by Madonna at one time. I also have the demo disc, which had a 2-minute preview video of Final Fantasy VIII (then upcoming) as well as a playable demo of Xenogears, which I loved even more.

Metal Slug games are pretty good. I have the collection disk for Wii. On PS3, I enjoyed a similar game, Hard Corps: Uprising (a Contra game made by Arc System Works.)

Sounds like the "old" 3DS is probably good enough for you then.

I'd honestly still go for the New 3DS, but that's just me. It sounds to me like you're leaning towards NGP, so that's what I would pick for you. :)

Is this the New 3DS that you're talking about?

I think it's cool to find another PixlBitter playing Nights of Azure. I'm really enjoying that game myself. I like Gust's games in general, but Nights of Azure has been surprisingly engaging. I'm glad that it's avoiding all the BS that seems to plague more controversial releases nowadays.

You seem to be pretty good at getting into closed betas. What's the selection process like?

The entire Atari 8-bit line, which includes the 800 and the 130XE that I had, shares the Motorola 6502 CPU (as do the NES and the Apple II), as well as the ANTIC graphics chip and the POKEY sound/keyboard processor. The primary difference between them is the amount of RAM, which of course got cheaper over time. The 800 had 8K of RAM, the 130XE had 128K of RAM. This is keeping in mind that when the 800 launched, it cost over a thousand dollars in 1979 dollars, while the 130XE cost about $250 in 1986-1987 thanks to massive drops in component prices and manufacturing costs.

I didn't have documentation for most of my games, so I had to figure out how to play them on my own. The main key to winning the computer version of Ghostbusters was to keep Stay Puft from destroying buildings, which would start happening after the PK meter went above 4000 or so. Every building that Stay Puft destroyed cost you $4000, every Marshmallow Man attack you averted (by luring the ghosts that combined to form the Marshmallow Man away from the building using ghost bait at the right time) earned you a $2000 bonus. The "slimer" ghosts netted you $800 for each successful catch. The computer versions didn't feature the stair-climbing segment that the NES version did. Crane was trying to be ambitious with the game, but there was probably only so much he could do, and there was a lot of corporate meddling from Activision brass  particularly on Ghostbusters, which eventually prompted Crane, Garry Kitchen, and other designers to resign from Activision and form Absolute Entertainment. The synthesized "Ghostbusters!" voice that plays at start up was apparently quite expensive in and of itself for a three second audio sample.

Interesting note: Just as Activision did with Atari, Accolade, Acclaim, and Absolute all chose names for their companies further up on the alphabet from Activision so they would appear in a phone book ahead of Activision.

I'd like to see an update give us the ability to make slopes as in SMB3 and SMW, and I'd like the ability to change the background music and be able to use the alternate tracks in SMB3 and SMW. This is a great piece of software. Nintendo should bundle this into every Nintendo console going forward.

Journey is available on PS3, PS4, and Vita (I think). That's a good example of this type of game. They aren't my cup of tea, but I can see the appeal.