PixlBit

That was actually how Ms. Pac-Man was made. Jr. Pac-Man was an official release made by Midway at their company headquarters in Chicago based on the Hanna-Barbera Pac-Man cartoon.

Ms. Pac-Man's place in Pac-Man canon is kind of iffy as it is. Namco includes Ms. Pac-Man in its collections, sells Ms. Pac-Man games, and made a dual arcade machine in 2002 with Galaga, but they also kind of ignore Ms. Pac-Man at times when trotting out Pac-Man's history. The last few Pac-Man properties I've seen have left Ms. Pac-Man out altogether. I think Namco of Japan was a bit miffed that an American-made clone of Pac-Man sold better than their original game did.

They met their $2 million funding goal in a day, which is cool. Now if the game will actually get made...

Welcome back. Yeah, I know we talk on FB and all. We've all been at this a long time, eh? May 2015 was my 8th-year anniversary.

I think it would have been better for the series if Nintendo had finished the N64 game and released it. By the time the game would have been ready to ship, there were cartridge sizes available that were more than adequate to hold the game since it didn't use FMV, which is what took up the vast majority of space on most PS1 games, and they were able to make a cartridge big enough for Resident Evil 2, FMV and all. Perhaps Itoi wouldn't have gotten so burnt out on the process of making Mother 3 that he might have been encouraged to continue the series for further installments on the Gamecube, Wii, GBA, or DS. Who knows? And Nintendo would have been able to shake some of the image it had on the N64 for delaying or cancelling games, and that might have helped the company do better than it did during 6th gen. But we'll never know.

I rather liked the look of Mother 3 N64 myself. It was fairly detailed and as well-animated as things got on 64/32-bit consoles. Plus, Mother characters all have clay models associated with them anyway.

I always wondered why Jr. Pac-Man was never included in the Namco Museum compilations until I read that it was made by Midway in the US without Namco's permission.

Given the title of this blog, I expected to see The Shawshank Redemption on your watchlist.

I have the original Phantasy Star (and PSII and PSIV) on my Wii Virtual Console on Wii U. I never could get past the first town in that game. I think I'll stick with Dragon Quest I-IV for my 8-bit RPG fix, LOL.

I recently downloaded the PlayStation Namco Museums on my PSTV. All five volumes are on PSN now. My favorite is Volume 2, which has Gaplus (the underappreciated third game in the Galaxian/Galaga series), Mappy, Dragon Buster, and Super Pac-Man. Volume 1 has Pac-Man and Galaga, Volume 3 has Ms. Pac-Man, Dig-Dug, Galaxian, and The Tower of Druaga. Volume 5 has Pac-Mania and The Legend of "Valkyrie." Volume 4 is the most obscure.

I think Nintendo does test the waters with its choices of Smash Bros. characters. If the characters prove popular and Nintendo receives that feedback, that gives Nintendo incentive to do something with them, and I think that's what this blog is getting at. There really isn't much that can be done with franchises like Ice Climbers or Game & Watch anyway.

Powerstone is a fun fighting series. I played it a few times on Dreamcast (never owned a DC) and later bought the PSP version. I'm thinking of getting the digital PSP version to play on my PSTV. I wish Capcom would revisit the series.

To me, it's also a 3-D version of the gameplay in Smash Bros, and a direction I wish Nintendo would consider for that series.