PixlBit

What people forget when they say "Square Enix sold off Tomb Raider and Deus Ex for $300 million" is that Square Enix only paid the equivalent of $120 million for those franchises to begin with. Tomb Raider hasn't exactly been a big name since the third game on PS1, and even the reboots on PS4/X1 failed to make much of a splash. I'm not sure Embracer is going to do the franchise any better, as I'm not impressed by what I've seen out of them so far.

The Microsoft-Activision deal... I'll be blunt, as someone who has disliked their products for decades, I hope it fails. I'm never in favor of giving Microsoft more power over anything. It cheered my heart a bit when Windows Phone crashed and burned. It will eventually go through, unless the roadblocks become great enough that Microsoft investors get tired of trying and tell Nadella to drop the whole thing.

Eventually I will get on board with the next generation. It's just going to take more than The Last of Us and Dad of Boy Christianizes Scandinavia (which is what the Ragnarok story actually was about) to get me on board. FFXVI looks very promising, in contrast to the troubled developments of FF13 and FF15, so that's a hope spot there. Hopefully I will be done with Tears of the Kingdom and Fire Emblem Engage by the time it releases.

High on Life looks interesting, but I have neither a Xbox nor a PC. 

Currently playing Persona 5 Royal and Crisis Core Reunion, which is an excellent remaster of the PSP classic. Oh, and Valkyrie Profile is out on PS4/5 now.

I always wanted to build a model train set. 

Stage Select:

Honestly? I'm still on the Switch, and more interested in Switch 2 than the PS5 or the XSX|S. Those systems seem to be almost stillborn. Part of this is due to chronic supply chain shortages driving up prices and causing product shortages. To be honest, the PS5 and XSX really haven't justified their existence yet, other than the fact that nobody is buying the PS4 or Xbox One.  The law of diminishing returns continues to apply with graphics, while none of the games really screams "I need a $500 console to play this." Hopefully FFXVI will change that. And to be honest, it seems like game companies are less focused on gameplay and graphics and more on how to get consumers to allow game companies to scoop money out of your bank accounts on an automated basis. Somewhere out there, Don Mattrick and Adam Orth are laughing their asses off, saying "we told you so."

Cage Match:

Giving this to Super Mario Odyssey. One of the best Mario games versus a lesser sequel is a no-brainer. 

I had those Tifa and Aerith Bandai figues back in the 1990s. May still have them packed away somewhere.

I've mostly been playing No Man's Sky with a side of Pokemon Scarlet and Persona 5 Royal.

The musical resemblance probably was intentional, and like a lot of video game companies, Capcom hoped to change it just enough to fly under the radar, or that the movie was so old by that point that the copyright wouldn't be enforced. 

John Carmack, the original producer of Doom, once observed that Bobby Prince, the composer, was also a lawyer who knew how to change songs just enough to avoid copyright lawsuits. A lot of Doom II's tracks are basically instrumental covers of Alice in Chains, Slayer, Black Sabbath, and of course Pantera, from id's home state of Texas (The level 23 music, based on AiC's "Them Bones," is the most notorious example.) 

When it comes to 2-D platformers, if I had to do a top 5, they'd all be Metroid and Mario games, with Super Metroid coming out on top. My favorite series after those would be Castlevania. 

One unusual platformer I enjoyed was Mischief Makers on the N64. I hope they consider putting that on Nintendo Switch Online.

Stage Select:

My proposal is an unusual one: I would like to see a Project A-Ko RPG, where you play as A-Ko, explore Graviton City, and battle B-Ko and her minions, ultimately facing off against the Cygnians to protect C-Ko. Or, if you find C-Ko really annoying, you could just let the Cygnians have her. This could be done by Atlus or by CyberConnect2, the makers of Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, or by the folks responsible for the upcoming One Piece Odyssey.  In the movies, A-Ko's parents are implied to be Superman and Wonder Woman, while B-Ko's father is based on Tony Stark.

Cage Match:

Probably going to give it to Spider-Man 2018 due to technological improvements and a better developer, but honestly, never played either game.

I haven't seen a Marble Slab since I lived in OK. Marble Slabs are based in Texas, Cold Stone is based in AZ. Cold Stone was also successfully able to go national. I saw one in Times Square, over a decade after my dad and I went to the very first one in Tempe, AZ.

We actually have Kura Sushi here in my area, and I've eaten there. I had sushi and one of those sweet red bean dessert buns. Cold Stone Creamery is local to Arizona (our outgoing governor was its president for a time), and I like their Mario stuff. They have a Mario Kart cake that I would have been all over when I was a kid. I don't eat ice cream as much as I did when my metabolism was better, sadly.