PixlBit

I think it's interesting how many spinoffs the Dragon Slayer series has!  I never got into Faxanadu, but boy I sure did like Legacy of the Wizard.  I even owned it, which was unusual because I mostly rented games back then.  I don't think I ever beat it, but I sure had fun playing with it, especially since you could play as the pet monster who couldn't be damaged by monsters!  

I never really got into the Trails of Cold Steel games.  Just don't have time to play ALL the games out there.  So I just focus on Ys.  I've always been interested in Ys, even when it had very limited US releases and was on consoles I didn't own, like the SEGA Master System and TG-16.  So I mostly just read about the Ys games a lot.  I didn't get to finally start playing them until Falcom started re-releasing them on systems like the DS and PSP, and companies like XSEED brought them to the US.

Right now I'm currently playing Ys 9 (just finished Chapter 6).  I like it a lot more than I thought I would.  I still like Ys 8 and 7 more (7 is my favorite Ys game), but Ys 9 is still very fun.  My favorite character is Raging Bull.  She has pink hair and is really strong.  She also sometimes can't remember the names of attacks and moves, because when she shouts them out, she'll sometimes say stuff like "Shadow...something or another!"  

I've gotten my brothers into Falcom games, too, in the past few years.  One of my brothers sent me this interesting video on the history of Falcom.

I saw Rastan in a few arcades back then.  It's OK, rather generic.  I think it was only made because barbarian movies were popular at the time.  I think it's funny that the sequel is called Nastar, which is just Rastan spelled backwards.

There is one Rastan-like game from Taito that I really liked in arcades, but I don't think it was on any of the Taito collections.  It was called Cadash and it was a 2-D platformer like Rastan, but it had RPG elements.  You could pick from four characters (like a ninja or wizard) and you could level up and get passwords to start up from where you left off.  As a kid, I always wished it would have a home console release, and it did on the TG-16, which I didn't have.  So that was a bit disappointing.

Glover came out when I was in college and writing for The Dallas Morning News.  Strangely enough, I never got to review it, which is weird because I had a pretty good relationship with Hasbro Interactive back then.  I never bought it myself, because I was a poor college student.  So I missed out on it.

This is a great game.  One of my favorite Wii games and it's one of the best selling Kirby games.  Although it's really not a Kirby game at all!  It originally starred Prince Fluff and was called World of Fluff, but Nintendo said 'change it to Kirby' so it would sell better.  So Prince Fluff was regulated to player two.  The yarn graphics in this game are great, but the music is also really fantastic.

I've played every Ape Escape game I can get my hands on.  I love that series and it needs a comeback.

I've never heard of Detective Waffles!  Sounds interesting.  But can it beat Phoenix Wright?

Believe it or not, I've never played that SpongeBob game either.  I know it's popular, but I've actually not a big fan of SpongeBob.

My old Russian Blue cat Chekov loved to be with me when I'd play NES games as a kid.  He'd either swat at the screen or sit in my lap trying to hit the buttons on the controllers!

Yeah the Bubble Bobble timeline is REALLY confusing!  Rainbow Islands has the subtitle "The Story of Bubble Bobble 2" but there is a Bubble Bobble 2 on the NES!  There's also a Bubble Bobble 3 and Parasol Stars: The Story of Bubble Bobble 3, too!  It's nuts! 

Bubby and Bobby in Rainbow Islands are the human forms of Bub and Bob from Bubble Bobble.  While I do like the cutness and simplicity of the game, I'm kind of with you, I don't really like Rainbow Islands that much.  I do like that in later levels, you go to islands that make reference to Arkanoid and Darius.  If you want to play a really good game with Bubby and Bobby, try Parasol Stars.  It's like Bubble Bobble with technique!

I played a demo of this on a demo disc and didn't like it, so I skipped out on it.  I think the only good thing this game had going for it was Phil Hartman R.I.P.  

Qwark really is a funny, likeable character, though.

There's many forms of Mahjong.  The two main ones you see in games are a matching game and one that's kind of like Poker.  I can understand the matching one, but not the other.  I wrote about it last year, but the Switch has a game called Clubhouse Games: 50 Worldwide Classics that has both Mahjong games on it.  I like the matching one on it, but at least it explains the rules on the other one.

I never saw this in arcades, but I certainly do remember it on the Taito collection.  I'm a sucker for cute Breakout style games.

But what IS Klonoa?  Nobody knows.  He's an Animaniac.