These games aren't my cup of tea, but I've watched my brothers play both of them and I can see why people like them. The graphics look great, especially in Call of Duty, and every online match is different. So yeah, I can understand why they are so popular.
I remember Jungle Hunt being super popular in arcades when I was a kid. I saw it everywhere! But did you know there are three different versions of that game? The first is Jungle King, and starred a Tarzan lookalike. The Edgar Rice Burroughs family got wind of this and threated to sue Taito for using a character way too similar to Tarzan, so Taito changed the hero to the pith helmet wearing explorer and the game became Jungle Hunt. While I've seen Jungle Hunt everywhere, I've only seen Jungle King at the National Videogames Museum. The third version of the game I've never seen, though. They reworked it again with a pirate theme and called it Pirate Pete! Crazy, huh?
I never thought to play the racism card for the game's failure. Maybe Sunsoft Japan just didn't find those stereotypes on a silly cartoon squirrel all that offensive to themselves. I think its failure stems more from the glut of mascot characters at the time, and the fact that there was a more popular 16-bit hero with the name Zero. That being the character from Mega Man X.
I'm surprised they didn't change the name of Zero the squirrel because of MMX Zero, though. Video game companies do that a lot. It's why Mario Kart R was changed to Mario Kart 64 because they didn't want it associated with Sonic R. Another interesting change was with Pac-Man World. I got to follow that game with the developers from start to finish when I was writing for the newspaper, and the pirate ship boss was named H.M.S. Hanky in one of the preview builds. But South Park was gaining popularity at the time, and had an awful character in it named Mr. Hanky, so the PMW team changed the name of their boss to H.M.S. Windbag in the final version.
Have you ever tried playing Yoshi's Island with the volume turned off? It's actually way harder. That crying may be annoying, but it does have its uses.
Since I didn't like ICO very much, I skipped out on this one.
I've beaten every single Zelda game except for two. I never beat Majora's Mask. I got to the end, but was distracted by Banjo-Tooie, which came out soon after. I also never beat Zelda 2 on NES. That game is too dang hard. I did watch my friend beat it back when we were kids, though. But I've finished every other Zelda game.
I actually reviewed an Inazuma Eleven game a long time ago!
Luigi's Mansion 3 is a great game. It almost won my GOTY award for 2019. But I gave it to the Link's Awakening remake since that's my favorite Zelda game.
Only Soccer game I ever liked was Mario Strikers. Heck, I didn't even like Mega Man Soccer, and I didn't get into the Kunio-Kun soccer games like I did Super Dodge Ball.
Believe it or not, I have been known to laugh at fart jokes and potty humor. But Boogerman was a bit too much. I do like that he was in ClayFighter, though. I do wish I could've gotten a chance to play the N64 game. That's a series in need of a comeback!
