PixlBit

Best friend's friend's wife's birthday party ... But really I just want some Cajun food.

You'll find something! That sucks though. Message me if needed. 

Wedding tomorrow, concert Sunday, colleague retirement (kind of) dinner the 6th, probably gonna see Wonder Woman, start inventory gig mid-late June, New Orleans trip late July, and hoping to do some stuff in Dallas.

So I started that song up and immeditely forgot about it while reading the other parts of this blog, then said "dammit, where is that commercial coming from?" Then I realized it was on here, and when you said it was on a Coke commercial, I thought "KNEW IT. I KNEW IT WAS IN AN AD!" lol I've never seend the ad; just has that sound to it.

I've never seen the original Dirty Dancing. I have ... no opinion there. 

I don't have near as many CDs, but I have a few more than can fit in my black CD case now and I unfortunately found some of my Metallica, Megadeth, and Pantera CDs scratched to hell upon cleaning my car ,,, and I forget how to access stuff I uploaded into iTunes rather than purchased. It won't show me that list for some reason. DAMMIT. Well, guess I'll just have to download all my Metallica stuff to replace the CDs. 

I want to just turn my phone into an eReader and get rid of the social media stuff. 

To me, Twitter is just a generally awful place, as is tumblr. Facebook can be just as toxic, but I'm more in control of my feed there, so I can trick the algorithm by just liking what I want to see. 

I share your hatred and contempt for useless dog owners, but I'd say more like in the hundreds still. lol 

Blue and gold is a good combo I guess.

Oh yeah, that one looks great. I think it is still a sim though, just a bit more forgiving so it's not totally one or the other. I haven't played it though, so I could be wrong.

Congrats on the job and the youngin'! 

I usually avoid JRPGs, but I have Persona 5 in my GameFly Q, on the basis that it "looks cool." 

Nice to see you're back and got a promotion. 

I think they just take too much time, and he seems to have a lot of projects on top of Game Grumps now. But yeah, I love those videos. 

I'm going to agree to disagree that Sonic is ONLY good when he goes fast or that the games don't hold up; I think some of the platforming in slower sections holds up in 2 & 3. But the water level in 1 ... yeah, I can't defend that. As for the casino level, I love the ones in 1 and 2 and think they act as a nice precursor to Sonic being used as a pinball. If you mean 3, that level is labyrinthine in a way it has no right to be only because so much looks the same, and I'm with you there. The games are flawed, but I still think the good levels outweigh the bad. 

I'll agree that Mario games give you more to do, but I actually really appreciate the simplicity of Sonic mechanics. I don't think there's anything wrong with cutting it down to the basics of what makes a good platformer. And I could never get the cape flight down consistently, so that may be a factor. lol 

I still think DKC looks pretty good. Star Fox for SNES looks like garbage now, but while DKC isn't mind-blowing any more, I think it's still at least passable and looks good compared to several other games in the same era. 

Stage Select

This one is hard because I remember themes much better than I do specific pieces of dialogue/writing. If you asked me for a list of best-written games or even famous game quotes, that would be a bit more simple. Anyway, I'll probably change this list every day for as long as I live, just like I would with something like "favorite song lyrics/favorite movie quotes," but here goes:

3. Horizon: Zero Dawn VERY EARLY GAME SPOILERS (Womb of the Mountain is mission I finished last)

Teersa: "Always that is what I believed. That you came from the womb of the mountain ..."

Aloy: "But ... this isn't a goddess! It's a door!" 

Aloy's outcast status and skepticism of her tribe's beliefs and rituals is a big part of why I want to play more of the game and relate to her. ... Yeah, this is really stretching what counts as "best dialogue," I know. I guess it just drives certain themes in the game so far home for me. 

2. The Last of Us

Ellie: Back in Boston... Back when I was bitten... I wasn't alone. My best friend was there. And she got bit too. We didn't know what to do. So... [...] She says... "Let's just wait it out. Y'know, we can be all poetic and just lose our minds together." [pause] I'm still waiting for my turn.

Joel: Ellie—

Ellie: Her name was Riley and she was the first to die. And then it was Tess. [beat] ..And then Sam.

Joel: None of that is on you.

Ellie: No, you don't understand.

Joel: I struggled for a long time with survivin'. And you— ..No matter what... you keep finding something to fight for. Now, I know that's not what you want to hear right now, but it's—

I'll be honest, this did not stick out to me as much when I actually played TLoU, but as someone who has suffered from depression and guilt in the past, I recognized it as some powerful stuff when I was looking this stuff up online. 

1. Psychonauts

Raz: "They stole Dogen's brain!"

Typical response from other characters: "No. He's just like that." 

This dialogue stands out to me because it's recurring and makes me laugh, but really this game's dialogue is probably my favorite of any video game. It cracks me up. Now if I can only get past this damn "put on the right play" level ... I'm so glad this is on PS4, since my PC copy bugged out all the time and wouldn't recognize my 360 controller and I always hated that it was the ONE "kiddy" game (not really; see dialogue) I actually wanted to play for Gamecube ... only it wasn't on Gamecube! 

Chrono Chross

Street Fighter II: Turbo for SNES. This one: 

It was released in U.S. August 1993, according to the Internet and no matter what year it was released it was going to be my pick. The reason I include the picture is because it's hard to keep track of iterations of this damn game and I almost chose Star Fox (which was one of those now-ironic "holy crap, they will never make graphics better than this!" games for me) thinking only the first port had come out this year.

Anyway, this version of the game is the one I played by far the most of any video game period growing up, edging out even Super Mario World. When I chose Capcom as one of my favorite developers and listed music as one of the reasons why, this was a huge influence on that decision. Even when I got to college, I was ecstatic when I learned a friend's roommate had a copy and immediately started playing it with him.

I didn't even realize the "Turbo" mode was there until I grew up; I just kind of went with whatever speed the game defaulted to and enjoyed the music, style, tight gameplay, ocassional taunting dialogue at the end of matches, complete with bloodied faces of the losers, and the iconic "Beat the shit out of this car" minigames. (I can't remember if Mortal Kombat did the chop this woodblock thing first or?) 

I think you could make a solid argument for Mega Man X being the best game this year, NBA Jam appeals to me on several levels as someone who loves arcade-style titles, political humor and actually played basketball pretty well growing up, and then you've got plenty of legitimate picks for this year that others have likely played much more than I have, but this game WAS my gaming childhood growing up. 

I also liked that the PlayStation disc anime movie about Street Fighter II my neighbors had featured Alice in Chains. 

For the record, my favorite character was Vega at the time (really more like two years later, since I don't think I played this much as a 3-year-old toddler in its release year), mostly cause I thought he looked cool and liked his slice hands. Had no idea he was a villain. 

The introductory Capcom logo and music, along with the game's intro music and demo scenes probably got pounded into my skull more than anything I learned in school. And I'm a professor now ...