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3. The monster team from Dragon Quest VIII. There's something so amusing about summoning a team of cyclopes and trolls to whale on a bunch of slimes.

2. Shadow from Tales of Symphonia. He has a really creepy voice clip that plays when you summon him.  Plus, I like the battle music (Fighting of the Spirits) that plays when you're fighting Summon Spirits in that game.

1. Shiva and Siren from FF8. Their biggest power of all was how they managed to get those Demi Moore pelts they sport on the PS1 past both the ESRB and Sony Computer Entertainment America. There is no way you can even pretend those are costumes. The first time I saw them, I was like "What. The. Fuck."

Cage Match:

Terry Bogard was like "Evil What?" So someone handed him a copy of Evil Zone on PS1 to play. After playing it, he was like, "nah, this is too easy," and spent the rest of the evening looking at Mai's OnlyFans.

Does this Gems of War game have Quick Draw McGraw in it or something?

I'm playing TMNT: Shredder's Revenge now. I was briefy into the Ninja Turtles as a bridge between Garfield and The Simpsons. I really enjoyed the arcade games, though I like the Simpsons arcade game better.

When I was a kid, DC Comics was dominant and Marvel was kind of an afterthought (the only Marvel thing on TV when I was a kid was Lou Ferrigno's Incredible Hulk) so I'm more comfortable with Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman.  I was a fan of Garfield when I was a kid. I even had the 9 Lives book, where one of the stories is of Garfield being a housecat that mauls his owner. And unlike the other stories, where other artists contributed, that story was written by Jim Davis himself. 

I also liked Heathcliff, which actually came out a few years before Garfied did, and was still pretty well-known at the time. 

Neither of y'all ever saw Misery or read the book?

In contrast to Fallout 3 and 4, New Vegas's endings took into account your faction standings, the story arc you chose, the choices you made throughout the game, and your interactions with the NPCs.  New Vegas was exactly the way a game like that should end. Of course, New Vegas had a different set of writers and developers (namely, the guys who actually created the franchise in the first place). One of the biggest WTF moments in gaming was how badly Obsidian got screwed over by Bethesda over a one-point Metacritic score, and it helped contribute to my complete distaste for Metacritic.

Boston "Frogs"? 

I have never been much into sports games other than a few tries with Nintendo Baseball and with NBA Jam. This was a pretty good-looking sports game, though. A lot of work went into this and Blades of Steel, also by Konami.

I'd always wished a company other than EA had become dominant in the sports arena. It might have changed later video game history. EA's big break in consoles came when they borderline extorted Sega into granting special licensing privileges for EA by threatening to release Madden 92 unlicensed on the Genesis at CES if Sega didn't accept their terms. Their refusal to support the Dreamcast was also seen as one of the final nails in Sega's coffin as a hardware manufacturer, though it certainly wasn't the only issue Sega had. Konami seems to have been the best Japanese company when it came to sports.

My favorite Pac-Man game is Ms. Pac-Man. Once you've played that, it's a bit hard to go back to the original. I liked the arcade machines that were set up so Ms. Pac-Man traveled at top speed all the time. "Regulation" Pac-Man seems a little slow after playing one of those. 

I remember seeing a Pac-Land machine at a grocery store. I wonder what they were thinking with those controls. Even back then, they had Donkey Kong as a reference for how platforming controls should work. I first saw Pac-Mania at a Pizza Hut when I was at a state school competition in the 5th grade. 

It would be cool if Namco had acknowledged Jr. Pac-Man, but that would have caused the same legal headaches as Ms. Pac-Man. In retrospect, I can see why Namco was upset that Midway created these games without their permission. Legally, it allowed other entities to put their fingers in the pie. Kind of reminds me of the legal hassles Nintendo went through with Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. I'm pretty sure they didn't want to take any chances that Ikegami could stake a copyright claim on Mario or Donkey Kong as IP. But they seem to have ironed out their differences since we have all those games on Switch, and I'm glad of that.

Yes, it was made using the same engine as Ms. Pac-Man, so it would pose the same legal headaches for Bandai Namco. Plus, Namco wasn't exactly happy that Midway went and made its own Pac-Man games without permission, and they took the license back after they felt that Midway was abusing the licensing deal. Given the legal mess with ATGames, a case could be made that they were pretty justified in their displeasure over these unauthorized games. They did tolerate Ms. Pac-Man because the game was a huge success and was still a money-maker after most other arcade games died out. 

I kind of wish they'd put Jr. Pac-Man on one of these collections, and get Ms. Pac-Man back from ATGames. Looks like that's been given up as a lost cause, since even in Pac-Land she's been replaced by Pac-Mom. 

Stage Select: Worst Video game Endings.

3. Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle for Game Boy. I bought this with my hard-earned money when I was 12. Not an awesome game by any means, but it had 80 levels, and that was a big deal for a kid. There was a story in the manual, and as it turned out, the story existed only in the manual. Instead of a big payoff after finishing level 80, you got Bugs Bunny saying "Congraturations [sic]!! You are good player! [sic]" That's it. Even freaking Tetris had an "ending" screen if you got enough points. 

2. Valkyrie Profile's default ending was kind of disappointing. You defeat the demon lord Surt and save Odin's bacon. All you get for your trouble is a "Well done!" from Freya and are put to sleep for the rest of eternity. To be fair, the game does have a completely different endgame and a much more satisfying ending hidden within it, but it requires a guide to unlock, since if you miss certain milestones, you can't go back and are locked into the "neutral ending." When Valkyrie Profile came out, online game guides were harder to come by than they are now, and there was no YouTube. The game is still one of my favorite PS1 games.

I can think of a couple of other endings that others experienced that fall into this category. Dreamweb, a game I mentioned in a previous episode, had an ending that made my dad mad. The main character kills the seven people who are supposedly bringing about the apocalypse. Of course, since the authorities don't see all the magical stuff that the player sees, they've labeled you as a serial killer, and the game ends with the player character being ambushed by the police and gunned down. The documentation included with the game drops more than a few subtle suggestions that the player character's sanity is breaking (he's deeply depressed because his girlfriend, who he met at university, is climbing the ladder of success at a mega-corporation while he's been stuck being a beaten-down bartender at a dingy pool hall since he graduated) that the "keepers of the Dreamweb" and the Cthulu-like imagery in the church are in fact psychotic breaks from reality, and that the authorities may be perfectly justified in labeling you as a serial killer and dealing with you accordingly. This isn't reflected in the gameplay itself, however, and my dad told me it kind of pissed him off.

My wife was a longtime fan of Warcraft and told me the ending of Warcraft 3 (the original) made her mad, for similar reasons.

1. Fallout 3. All that supposed choice and freedom you're supposed to have gets thrown away in the ending sequence, where you're basically guilted by everybody else into dying a horrible, puking, hair-shedding death from radiation sickness. Your big decision is whether or not to figuratively pee in the wasteland's water supply. Either way, you're still going to have all your blood cells destroyed by a bombardment of gamma rays and flying neutrons, so you're almost tempted to do the deed just to stick it to everyone. This is your only choice that matters, regardless of whether you've spend your entire game either running to be the next Jesus or the next Satan. And the ending sequence is still lame and blatanly looks like they had to rush the game out the door. The only difference between the good ending and the bad ending is a couple lines of dialogue. Either way, you're stil a decaying puddle of mush in the Jefferson Memorial, and I know this because the game shows you as a puddle of glowing mush, so you don't get to live to see the wasteland saved or destroyed. Broken Steel rectifies things somewhat, but with a bigger deus ex machina retcon of the original ending than Paul Sheldon had to employ to get Misery Chastain out of the grave so Annie Wilkes would stop smashing his kneecaps with a hammer. And then, according to Fallout 4, the Brotherhood of Steel just ends up enslaving the Capitol Wasteland anyway.

Honorable mention to Fallout 4, by the way. You do get some degree of choice, and the game lets you play past the end and build settlements, but it was still a bit of a generic letdown.

Cage Match:

Final Fantasy VII is a continuation of one of my favorite video games ever and looks gorgeous, so I'll go with that. I like Kingdom Hearts, but I will always prefer video games that aren't tied to huge outside licenses like Disney or superheroes. I'm kind of torn on FF7R, though, It looks great, but a part of me would rather they have just redone the original game using the engine for Dragon Quest XI, and released it as one complete game instead of in multiple parts. And that they'd kept it turn-based. Probably would have both sold better and cost them a lot less money to make.