PixlBit

I played the first Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy over at a friend's house.  We would take turns playing the game while the other would look at maps and beastiaries included in the instruction booklets, and sometimes even make our own maps.  I kind of liked Final Fantasy a little more, mainly because I'm a visual person and it was nice to see both your characters and enemies on screen.  

I liked both games, but not enough to buy them to play on my NES at home.  I was just happy playing them at my friend's house.  But that changed with the SNES.  Once I rented Final Fantasy 2 (well it's 4, but you know), I was blown away and was really into 16-bit RPGs after that. 

You know what?  I actually played this one!  I rented it once at my local video place.  And you know what?  I didn't like it.  But I was more into RPGs at the time.  I'm not sure if the sequel was at the rental place, but if it was, I probably wasn't keen on trying it if I didn't like the first one.  And I know that the spinoff, Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel wasn't at the rental place.

Even though it wasn't part of my childhood, I still have a lot of good memories with Pokemon because when it first came out, I was writng for The Dallas Morning News.  i saw how it was going to be marketed in the US at one of the first E3's I went to, and I knew it would be a hit.  I told my editor that I wanted to cover everything Pokemon when it came out, and he was like "Yeah sure, whatever."  But once it came out, I was writing Pokemon articles left and right and I like to say that Pokemon helped pay my way through college.

I didn't mind Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu (that was the version I got).  It was fun to control the game while holding an actual Pokeball, and catching Pokemon like how you do in Pokemon GO helped the game feel different and made the pace faster.  Plus they added a few new moves to keep veteran trainers on their toes.  Like in the Water Gym Battle, Misty uses a Pokemon that knows a move called Hot Water that actually burns your Pokemon!  Yeow!  Unfortunately I never finished this game.  Just too many other distractions.

I THINK I remember this one.  It was made probably in response to Capcom hit shooters like Section Z, Side Arms, and Forgotten Worlds.  It must've not been very good if it doesn't stick out in my mind, though.  I mostly just remember the title.

One song that always makes me think of a game is Offspring's "All I Want" which is kind of the "theme song" of Crazy Taxi.  You never want to listen to that song while driving a real car, though, as it may subconciously make you want to drive unsafe like in the game!

Another mascot platformer I never played.  Again, I wasn't about to pay full price for these kinds of games back then, and if it wasn't available at my local rental place, I didn't play it.  Probably didn't help that there was another squirrel video game mascot then, too.  Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel was a spinoff to Aero the Acrobat, another furry animal game mascot.  If I had to say something nice about Mr. Nutz, it's that the graphics look nice.

As a kid I didn't play Elevator Action much because I wasn't very good at it, and I tended to spend what few quarters I had in the arcade on games I was good at.  More bang for your buck, you know? It wasn't a bad game, just harder for Little Cary to grasp.

I did, however, really like Elevator Action Returns.  It's on one of the Taito collections.  If it's one the collection you've got, I hope you get to play it!  It's awesome!

Have you ever heard of the latest game in the series?  It's called Elevator Action: Death Parade and it's an arcade light gun game similar to Time Crisis.  But you get extra buttons to open and close an elevator door, and buttons to choose floors.  What's cool is that when the doors close, it's an actual physical pair of elevator doors that block the screen!  It surprised me at first when it happened!  You can even use the elevator doors as shields, too!  I played it once at Round 1 arcade. 

The name of your character in the orginal game is Secret Agent Otto.  He actually appears as a helper character in Arkanoid vs. Space Invaders, along with other Taito stars like Bub & Bob and even Time Gal!

I've never played the Arkham games, but I watched my brother Jeff and his friends play one of them for a bit.  I knew who some of the characters were because of my frequent watching of Batman: the Animated Series when I was a teen in the 90s.

I've played and reviewed most of the Travellers Tales LEGO games out there.  The only ones I didn't review were some of the first ones, like the first Star Wars and Indiana Jones games.  I also didn't review LEGO The Hobbit, but I didn't play it either.  Nor did I play the second half of the LEGO Harry Potter games (they split them into two initially).  But as the years progressed, I've grown my relationship better with the LEGO games publisher, so I get to review pretty much every LEGO game now.

Aside from the occasional game to review, I play Animal Crossing pretty regularly.  I'm also trying to beat Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity so I can move onto something else.  Right now I'm on Chapter 7, so I'm almost done.  I play the game on 'easy' so hopefully it won't get ridiculously hard at the end.  I want to finish the game because I just got Ys 9 in the mail and I want to play that next.  It's really the first big 2021 game I've been looking forward to.

And speaking of Breath of the Wild, Hyrule Warriors, and Divine Beasts.  Since Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is a prequel to BotW, one of the neat things you can do in it is actually PILOT the Divine Beasts sometimes.  It's just in there for fan service, but it's still fun to trample over thousands of tiny soldiers on the ground while driving a giant mechanical elephant or camel.  Hopefully in Breath of the Wild 2, you'll be able to combine all four Divine Beasts into one giant robot: Voltron style!  Look for that in Breath of the Wild 2: Go! Go! Triforce Rangers! :)