PixlBit

Damn, sorry about the job falling thtough.

Stage Select:

Simulation games are my go-to for "relaxing" games. In those games, you spend a lot of time watching the results of your actions play out.

City simulation games have long been a big go-to for me for relaxing games. I would have just said "SimCity" until EA completely shat the bed with SimCity 5. Thankfully, Cities Skylines has largely filled that void. It's just relaxing watching the buildings rise into the sky and the traffic flowing. 

My other go-to for relaxing games are the Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons games. There's something oddly compelling about all the planting, harvesting, and dating simulation aspects of these games. My favorites out of this series have been A Wonderful Life on Gamecube, and I recently played Pioneers of Olive Town on Switch.

Cage Match:

Super Metroid is peak 2-D platforming. Everything about it, the gameplay, controls, atmosphere, the power-ups, is just about perfect. I'm hard-pressed to think of a game that met my expectations as thoroughly as Super Metroid did.

Waifu Discovered 2? You're a naughty boy, Cary. 

 Warner Media is jumping onto the the Smash clone bandwagon, too. Their version has DC, WB, and H-B characters. One of the characters is Shaggy, and I think Tom and Jerry are confirmed, too. And Arya Stark from Game of Thrones is in it. Since Mortal Kombat is owned by Warner Media, that means we could see Scorpion in that game, too. Kevin Conroy is on board as the voice of Batman.

I wonder if Disney is going to jump into this market to compete with CBS and Warner. You'd have Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Iron Man, Darth Vader, and Homer Simpson at a minimum, and it'd be cool if they did Hank Hill, Peter Griffin, and Bob Belcher too. 

I like the Sakura Wars and Dragon Quest shout-outs. Working Designs was supposedly trying to get localization rights to Sakura Wars in the 1990s, but Sega management turned them down. 

My top games of the decade:

1990: SMB3

1991: Final Fantasy 4

1992: A Link to the Past

1993: Link's Awakening 

1994: Super Metroid

1995: Chrono Trigger

1996: Super Mario 64

1997: Final Fantasy VIi

1998: Ocarina of Time

1999: Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete

I think Goldeneye was the best-selling game of 1998 despite also being the fifth best-selling game of 1997. Ocarina of Time was number 2.

That show came on at 6 AM on a high number channel in my area. Too bad only 13 episodes got localized. 

Stage select:

I'd probably choose to live in Hyrule. C'mon, you probably knew in your hearts I would pick Hyrule. Anyway, Hyrule has plenty of nice areas to live, and plenty of dangerous areas if you really want to go swinging a sword about. It's not a sucking pit of despair like Temeria or most of the Fallout world, which would be fun to adventure in until you wanted to take a rest or eat. I'd probably build a cottage in the mountains or the forest near Lake Hylia, or maybe I'd go hang out in the desert. I'd have a horse on hand to ride to Castle Town.

Cage Match: My PixlBit avvy as of this post is from Dragon Quest XI, so that should tell you which game I'm voting for.

 Final Fantasy has gone somewhat off the rails with its experimentation. FFXV was an improvement from XIII, but was still somewhat of a mess from its tumultuous development as FFVsXIII.  The story was a mess, and I gotta tell you, it was kind of weird seeing Final Fantasy characters camping out with Coleman tents and gas stoves and stores taking American Express. One of the diners in the game looks suspiciously like a Whataburger. I enjoyed the game, but it didn't quite grab me in the way that 7 or 12 did.

Dragon Quest XI, especially the "S" version, is pretty much a distillation of everything I like about Japanese RPGs. It's a beautifully rendered world, with all of the familiar monsters in their glory. There's a lot to do. The characters were a lot more charming than Noctis, Gladio, Ignus, and Prompto. It's also incredibly loaded with content, many will probably say too much. It still has the turn-based battle system, though they've marched it forward in increments rather than trying wholesale to reinvent the wheel. It's incredibly polished on all fronts, in comparison to the unfinished feel of FFXV. 

If you'd told me at 22 that I'd be picking a Dragon Quest game over a Final Fantasy game in a match up, I would have laughed. But here we are. Final Fantasy is still trying to find its way back; Dragon Quest, meanwhile, is better than ever.

(And you thought I was going to point out that GTA does, in fact, have six wanted levels. HA!)

I still do things around here. Much more peaceful than Facebook.

Boulder Dash was a staple of my youth. I played it on Atari 8-bit, which is the platform it was originally developed for. i had quite a few of those digging type games. Henri was a knockoff of Mr. Do. Man, I wish Hamster would release Mr. Do as an Arcade Archives title. Firebug gave you the ability to dig and shoot. I also had the official 8-bit version of Dig-Dug from Atari, but it was kind of poorly done, being slow, buggy, and with awful graphics and sound.

I've kind of thought about giving Ring Fit Adventure a try. That sounds like a fitness game that's up my alley.

The place where Lucas receives his PSI powers is a bit on the oof side. I can easily see someone freaking out and Congress going apeshit in this day and age. I'm pretty sure Nintendo's lawyers could see that scenario. There was some to-do over Tomodachi Life a few years ago. Maybe it's just the way Tomato translated the scene.