PixlBit

Since we were talking about plumbing games, I just remembered that there is a game on the Atari 8-bit computers called Electrician, where you have to run wires. Of course, you have to deal with pests chewing through your wires before you can complete a circuit, power surges, and Goddamned Bats. It was a pretty fun game, too. To go from house to house, you had to crawl through sewers infested with alligators.  It even got a Famicom port, which sadly didn't get released over here even though the original game is American in origin. 

I can vouch for PaRappa being rather janky, but it was a lot of fun and the songs were catchy. I think part of the reason it was that way was so that you could try to do things a little more free-form without being penalized or even being rewarded if the game liked your rhythm.

I have Theatrhythm Final Fantasy on 3DS. Played it quite a bit. 

My favorite rhythm game is one that people don't think of as a rhythm game, and doesn't even use music. That game is, of course, Punch-Out!!, which at its heart is a rhythm game that uses boxing and the body language of your opponents as a rhythm device rather than music. 

I had a TI-99/4A computer as a kid, and when I saw "Car Wars," my first thought was a game on that system that was a clone of Head-On/Dodge 'Em.

The only Wizardry game I've actually played was one of the Japanese-made Wizardry games on PS3, years after Wizardry 8 was releeased and Sir-Tech disappeared completely. I was always more of an Ultima fan.  I have played the Wizardry-like Shining in the Darkness in Sega Genesis collections. My favorite first person RPG from the 1980s was called Alternate Reality, it was on the Atari 8-bit computers. My favorite 1981 game is Donkey Kong, which is still my all time favorite arcade game. It was, and is, brilliant. 

I didn't really play Xevious much. I did play a similar game, Megazone, which was made by Konami and which I keep hoping shows up on Arcade Archives. 

1943 is an awesome shmup. I have Capcom Arcade Stadium and still play it.  

A lot of the fun in Smash is using Nintendo characters, and since Brawl, the crossovers in the video game industry at large. Smash Ultimate was a huge love lettter not only to almost the entire Japanese game industry (the only thing I think that they could have added was Adol Christin for some Falcom representation), but there was also a fair bit of Western representation there as well. Just wish Nintendo had allowed Scorpion to be in Smash.  None of Smash's clones have that kind of cachet, though Viewtiful Joe RHR was pretty good. PSABR honestly came at a pretty weak period for PlayStation, plus the characters weren't nearly as iconic as the ones in Smash. All I could think about was how Sony should have bought Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon when they had the chance to do so. Cloud and Sephiroth were an especially glaring omission given that Final Fantasy VII pretty much built the PlayStation brand single-handedly, but I'm pretty sure Nintendo had already secured Cloud for Smash Wii U/3DS by that point. 

The first sports games I ever played were a couple of TRS-80 games. One was a baseball game, the other was a decathlon game made by "Micro Soft." Yes, it was the same company before they turned into the giant company-swallowing behemoth they are today. I played Track and Field and Activision Decathlon on Atari. I had an Atari Trak-Ball with a rapid fire switch on itb(and was about the size of a Sega Genesis) so I cheesed my way through those games. My favorite sports games are the NBA Jam games by Midway, the ones that featured digitized players and had Mortal Kombat characters and even President Bill Clinton as hidden players. I do play the Nintendo sports games once in awhile. 

I played a similar game yesterday: Super Mario Sunshine. It's like Power Wash Simulator, except Bowser's minions are trying to kill you.

Yeah, I'd wear the cat ears. Bonus points if it has a big bow tied to one of the ears.

Stray seems like an interesting game, but it isn't a cat simulator until the cat walks across a keyboard while you're trying to type stuff. I remember playing an Atari 8-bit game in the 80s called Alley Cat.

Stage Select:

3. Cloud in Smash 4 and Ultimate.  Now we could finally settle the age-old 5th generation question of Link versus Cloud. Now you can even have Link and Cloud square off against Ganon and Sephiroth. Or Link and Sephiroth against Cloud and Ganon. Or whatever.  But Cloud was my favorite third party character in Smash. 

2. Link in Soulcalibur 2 for the Gamecube. The developers really did their homework on Zelda lore. On the basis of Link being in that game, it was tied with Virtua Fighter 4 as my favorite 6th gen fighting game. 

1. Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa as Shang Tsung in Mortal Kombat 11. He really nailed Shang Tsung in the movie, and it was neat that Netherrealm was able to get permission to use his likeness in the game. To get a little personal, I recently watched Mortal Kombat on HBO Max. It's one of my favorite video game movies of all time. When I was 17, I went to see it in theaters with my dad, so watching it now is somewhat bittersweet, since it makes me miss my dad. 

Cage Match:

Driver 2 never made it to the match. On the way to the match, Driver 2 stopped to rob a gas station in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, but somehow only managed to steal a pack of Bubble Yum. Driver 2 couldn't figure out how to get back on I-40,  so it asked the clerk how to find the highway. The directions the clerk gave Driver 2 led it straight to the Okmulgee County Sheriff's Department. Driver 2 is currently facing 5 years in the Oklahoma state prison for armed robbery. Syphon Filter wins. 

Earthbound Origins was actually released on Wii U in a surprise release in 2015. However,  I believe it was already translated by Nintendo around 1990. It never got released because Nintendo didn't think it would sell, especially with the SNES on the horizon. So it was one of those games that Nintendo had lying around that never got released. For context, Wii U sales were pretty much in the tank in 2015, and they figured that Earthbound Origins would be a way to make a little quick cash and to remind Wii U owners that they were still out there. Maybe when Switch sales dip a little bit, which might be awhile since the Switch is still selling circles around PlayStation and Xbox, Nintendo might release Mother 3. Typically with Nintendo, once the toothpaste is out of the tube, they don't try to put it back in.

Part of the reason why Nintendo no longer makes Ken Griffey Jr/baseball games is because when they were making those games, Hiroshi Yamauchi personally held a full ownership stake in the Seattle Mariners, which was the first time a Major League Baseball team was owned by a non-American. However, it was thanks to Mr. Yamauchi that the team stayed in Seattle. 

So Nintendo had a ready-made entry into the baseball video game market.  When he died, Nintendo sold most of his stake in the team. I think they still hold ten pecent ownership, and the team's financial interests are managed by Howard Lincoln, Nintendo of America's 1980s-era CEO.