PixlBit

The only Pilotwings I actually played was Pilotwings Resort, which was a launch title for the 3DS, at the store. I thought videos of Pilotwings 64 were pretty impressive for their time. I never saw the SNES game in action.

The first line of your review really shows how times have changed. The NES (with Super Mario Bros in the US), Game Boy (Tetris and Super Mario Land), SNES (Super Mario World, Pilotwings, etc) and N64 (Super Mario 64) all launched with strong titles designed to showcase their systems. I guess Wii Sports falls into this category as well even though Wii games like Xenoblade, The Last Story, and Fire Emblem are more my speed.

For other systems, their good games didn't come until the consoles had been out for a year or two.  Even Nintendo hasn't been launching with the same kind of system-showcasing titles since the Gamecube, while Sony and Microsoft have always had kind of lackluster launches. That said, the PS3 and 3DS, my current favorite systems, both launched with rather weak launch titles, and look at them now!

Vanquish is one of my favorite shooters ever. Wish they'd do a sequel or a successor.

I'm an early PS4 adopter and I also own a Wii U, but honestly there isn't much to invest in the next generation just yet. Hell, the PS3 still has a full slate of great games coming in 2014, and I've really been digging the 3DS now that I finally got one, although I guess the 3DS belongs to the equivalent generation in handhelds that the PS4, Wii U, and Xbone do.

Thanks for the shout-out. Surprisingly, though, when I first got my 360, one of the first games I got with it was Halo 3. And I actually spent a fairish amount of time on it. I wasn't great at it, but for the most part I had fun, as long as my mic was muted or I was playing with friends. The actual people playing were mostly assholes, however, and when you consider that during the game, you can only talk to your teammates, that brings to mind the old cliche "With friends like these, who needs enemies?"

Before I finally gave up on Halo 3, my finest moment in the game came when I was playing team deathmatch. I was in one of the big Wraith tanks, I aimed and fired at an enemy that was dead in my sights, and some dumbass from my own team runs out in front of me and gets his ass blasted. The dumbass then gets on his mic, screaming about how I ruined his killstreak and for everyone on the team to "kill the n****r f****t." Next thing I knew, my teammates were after me. The other team must have wondered why our team suddenly stopped attacking them. Anyway, after I realized what was happening, I drove my Wraith over to our base, parked it there, and invited my "allies" to bring it on. Long story short: We were up by about ten points when the friendly fire incident happened, and my team was down twenty before they finally booted me in desperation. That was my proudest moment in Halo 3.

Halo 3 is the only Halo game I own. I didn't bother with ODST, Reach, or Halo 4, and I have no plans to buy an Xbox One in the foreseeable future, so that leaves out Halo 5. But honestly, although Halo isn't my cup of tea, I greatly prefer its style of gameplay and artistic design over the likes of Call of Duty or Battlefield.

This list of anticipated games is a list after my own heart. You know I'm down with Namco's flurry of Tales love. I'll be getting FFX/X2 HD, but I hope Square will consider a HD remake of FFXII, perhaps for PS4. I'll probably get most of these games, in fact. I already have Bravely Default's CE on preorder. Oh, and let me know when you get back into FFXIV. I'll be getting the PS4 version as well. I have it on PS3, but supposedly you're supposed to be able to upgrade to the PS4 version.

I've got my collectors' edition of Bravely Default reserved. Lots of good Wii U choices. As far as the indies go, I'm looking forward to Pier Solar HD, which was a homebrew Sega Genesis RPG originally that got big acclaim. I'll probably get it on PS4, but it's coming to all the big consoles and PCs. I think they're even making a Dreamcast version of it.

Definitely looking forward to Zestiria!

I haven't downloaded the demo myself. I did go and preorder the Collectors' Edition yesterday. I have the Zelda 3DS XL, so I'm good on screen size.

I like Kid Icarus, and it's an epic game for the 8-bit era, but it definitely had issues. The bottom of the screen is your mortal enemy in that game, and while that isn't so bad in the horizontal Overworld, which is rather Mario-like, it's a nightmare in the vertical Underworld and Skyworld. The Skyworld will keep you biting your nails every time you jump. The Game Boy game's biggest improvement was the elimination of all those cheap deaths from falling.

Good words to remember if you get the NES game: "ICARUS FIGHTS MEDUSA ANGELS".

Okami was awesome, as was Twilight Princess and FFXII.

Ni no Kuni is my GOTY. Haven't seen an RPG this good since the PS2 days (well, other than the SRPG Valkyria Chronicles, that is), and the only two PS2 RPGs that are in Ni no Kuni's league IMO are Dragon Quest VIII, from the same developers no less, and Final Fantasy XII.

As for the "bad press", the gaming press has long since fallen far its heyday in the late-90s-early 2000s The days of EGM, Gamefan, and others are long dead. Mackey's review in 1UP was crap. The industry is also infected with an ugly metastasizing cancer called Metacritic. Ni no Kuni is indeed awesome. Is it perfect? No, but neither are any games that are made by Bioware, Bethesda, CD Projekt Red, Square Enix, or anyone else or that matter.