PixlBit

As an experienced RPG lover, Golden Sun was a nice revelation for me. It was great having a full-featured and graphically pleasing RPG on a handheld gaming system. Before that, handhelds didn't sport a whole lot of RPGs other than Pokemon, and the ones they did have were very bare-bones by comparison. After Golden Sun, the handhelds seem to explode with RPGs, This was true of both Nintendo and Sony handhelds.

In any event, I did download Golden Sun for my Wii U and will be playing it today.

I played through some parts of BoFII but I got stuck about a quarter of the way. I have the downloadable version on Wii U.

Breath of Fire IV is a great game too. I have the downloaded version of it, but I've seen the disc version in Vintage Stock recently, complete with manual and everything, and I'm tempted to go for that.

Breath of Fire IV is certainly an excellent game. On a very technical basis, it's probably a better game than BoFIII, and I think it's probably considered the best BoF game overall. It certainly doesn't have the camera issues that III does since the camera is fully rotatable in IV. III just stuck with me more.

Whether a game aged well depends a lot on who made it. I felt a lot of the better PS1 and N64 games did age rather well. FFVIII, FFIX, and the N64 Zeldas aged rather gracefully in my book.

The one you saw on Wii U is Breath of Fire II. I'd say III is the best starting point, but since you'll probably have to find either a PS1 or PSP copy on eBay to play it (no digital distribution for that one in the US!) then II will do. If you have a PS3, PSP, or Vita, though, I'd go for BoFIV, which is available as a downloadable game. Other than certain thematic elements, the games aren't directly connected with one another so you're not going to miss out on any kind of overarching narrative.

I was a SNES kid, but surprisingly, I enjoyed the Genesis Sonic games more than the SNES Mario games. However, since then, Sonic has definitely fallen far behind Mario.

Streets of Rage was my favorite take on the Double Dragon theme, although my favorite beat-em-up game from that era overall was Konami's Simpsons arcade game (and that game is now seriously challenged by Dragon's Crown on PS3).

ToeJam and Earl was a bit esoteric for me. Catchy music though.

My own pick for Genesis mascots, however, would be Alex and Luna from Lunar: The Silver Star. And that's taking into account that I never played the Sega CD version of that game. The PS1 version of Lunar is one of my favorite games ever. Trust me, though, if I'd thought I could have talked my mom into springing for $400 for a Genesis+Sega CD combo back in the 90s, plus the money for Lunar, I'd have been a Genesis kid instead of a SNES kid.

Noel is probably my best fighter. I also like Arakune, who appears to be an homage to the River God from Spirited Away (one of the best anime movies ever made).

I missed out on the Intellivision myself. The only Intellivision games I played were the handful of Intellivision games that were converted to the 2600, like Astrosmash. You can tell those games because they're shaped like Intellivision cartridges with attachments to make them fit into a 2600 cart slot. Astrosmash was interesting, but Intellivision's offerings as a whole weren't very appealing. I was used to playing on the Atari 130XE anyway.

I don't think HD remakes of the PS1 games are coming, sadly. It would cost Square too much money to overhaul them into HD and not enough ROI. It's easier to do that kind of conversion of PS2 games to HD.

I had to write two giant papers this past week so I didn't get any gaming in. To celebrate, I've spent the past three days doing nothing but gaming (FFX HD and a couple of 3DS games.)