PixlBit

Wow. Those houses look like the houses I saw in East Germany that still had WWII bullet holes in them.

Do you have used game stores in Mississippi? Here in Oklahoma there are two different chains - Game X-Change and Vintage Stock. They carry everything from the Atari to the Wii U. Vintage Stock also carries movies, CDs, vinyl records, and toys. I've found some very rare PS1 and PS2 games at very reasonable prices at those, and definitely better than what I could get the same games for on eBay or Amazon.

The PS2 and the Cube were, and still are, wonderful systems, and I'm always discovering new goodies on them. Now that I've upgraded from a Wii to a Wii U - the Wii U plays Wii games but not GC games - I want to buy a GC to replace the one that was stolen, and I want to get a Game Boy Player for it like the one I had on my old Gamecube.

I like the AVGN's Toaster NES. It powers on when he pushes the toaster lever down. I assume it doesn't automatically pop up, eject the cartridge, and kill the juice on the game.

I know I'm not touching SimCity, especially after the Spore fiasco. Apparently within the EA system, even Maxis wasn't too big to fail.  I'll stick with SC4 for now, and if I want to look at a more up-to-date city sim, I'll look at Cities XL instead.

Xenoblade proves that great artists and engineers can overcome technical limitations. While it doesn't have the same sharp details as later PS3/360 games it is quite technically impressive.

I never did like Tomb Raider on the PS1. Nothing about it impressed me. Super Mario 64 was a far superior platformer with better controls. Resident Evil was far more interesting as a "mature" game. And I didn't even see her appeal as a video game sex symbol, when Namco and Square had far better offerings in that rather dubious department. Maybe it was a British thing?

That said, I'm interested in the new Tomb Raider. It's on the back burner behind games like Ni no Kuni or Bioshock Infinite, but it's the first time I've even been interested in Tomb Raider since the PS1 days, when I was primarily curious about all the hype behind the series. Maybe this will turn out to be another case of overhype, maybe not.

There are good games that can be done without conflict. It's generally possible to play through Metal Gear Solid games entirely on stealth, supposedly Fallout: New Vegas, and there have been good puzzle and adventure games that were completely without the player having to kill enemies.

One thing I will say in defense of the PS3 is that it's the best-built non-Nintendo console I've ever seen. The PS1 and PS2 were prone to the disc laser failing after a couple of years of heavy use - I know I went through 3 PS2s before I jumped into seventh-gen gaming with the Wii and 360, and two PS1s before that - and don't even get me started on the 360 unless you want to hear a bunch of ranting and swearing that make Gamemaster 4747 proud. And on the subject of Nintendo, even the NES wasn't the best-made piece of electronics out there. Some days I spent more time trying to get the NES cartridge to work without the screen flashing than I did playing the game!

But yeah, I definitely feel your pain. I will be definitely watching the next generation of consoles to make sure all the bugs are ironed out before I jump in. And I worry that EA's shady DRM practices of always online and all the other crooked stuff they put in their EULAs will become industry standard.

What I mostly hate about modern gaming is DRM and day-one patches. I remember spending countless hours with Maxis games like Sim City and Sim Ant when I was younger. Now I feel like I can't buy the new SimCity or any other EA game withouy my lawyer present to review the EULA. Final Fantasy VI had a few big bugs and glitches, like Relm's Sketch and the Evasion stat not working, but it was nothing compared to how buggy a Bethesda game is at launch, and even how buggy they are months after launch.

However, I will also say that the SNES never had games quite like Valkyria Chronicles, Ni no Kuni, or - yes - Fallout 3 or New Vegas. I just wish there was a way to keep everything good we've seen and throw out the bad. But then again, Ni no Kuni wasn't even saddled with all the bad stuff I associate with some modern games, so there is some hope.

Valkyrie Profile was definitely a surprise hit for me. I had a choice between it and Chrono Cross back in 2000. VP looked more interesting but I wasn't sure about its game play style compared to the safer style of CC. I went for VP anyway, and after buying the latter as a Player's Choice title for $20 a year later, I'm glad I went for Valkyrie Profile.

I don't think traditional RPGs are going away so much as they are changing. I've found plenty of good RPGs this generation, including one excellent game from the makers of VP, Resonance of Fate. And with cel-shaded graphics looking better than ever, I don't miss sprite graphics as much as I used to.