PixlBit

Posted on 07/18/2021 at 10:39 PM | Filed Under Blogs

I'm jelly of that copy of Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance you have there.I wish Nintendo would consider porting that. 

Posted on 07/14/2021 at 11:17 PM | Filed Under Blogs

It is insane that Halo is now 20 years old. Mario was 20 years old when Halo came out. I was a PS2/GameCube guy, so I didn’t play Halo until Halo 3 on 360. I played it for a few months and quit. My finest moment was when I fired a Wraith turret and some idiot on my team jumped in front of me and got blasted. He started swearing on the mic and told my teammates to attack me. I took refuge in a fortress and managed to cost my team 15 points in own-team kills before they were able to boot me. My reputation on Xbox Live probably took a beating that day.

Posted on 07/14/2021 at 11:10 PM | Filed Under Review

Both are on Switch for sure and likely on PS and Xbox as well. This game is available under its original title, Another World.

Posted on 07/14/2021 at 08:25 PM | Filed Under Feature

Stage Select:

This track from the 1994 British-made PC point and click adventure, Dreamweb. Composed by Matthew Costello. This track is a bit long and obviously you're not going to play the whole thing, but it's quite excellent and worth listening to start to finish. It is called Total HeAd Control [sic].

 My second piece is from Ultima III: Exodus on the NES, one of the first, but definitely not the last, RPGs I played. The music for the NES version was produced in Japan and was much different from the music for the computer versions, at least the computer versions that even had music to begin with. I found out years later that this track, and another U3 track, had a full J-pop rendition with vocals, called "Hitomi no Naifu" or "Knife of the Eye."

Cage Match: 

Final Fantasy VIII. Aside from the fact i thoroughly enjoyed the game itself in spite of, or even because of the junction system being pretty broken, it holds a special place in my heart. I really identified with Squall's inner turmoil, for one. Aside from the military and magical stuff, Squall's experience in high school was a lot like mine. It also came out the fall before I started college, so the school theme kind of stuck with me. 

Chrono Cross... when it came out, my finances gave me a choice between it and Valkyrie Profile. I chose Valkyrie Profile, thinking it looked more interesting. When I finally did play Chrono Cross, I learned thaf I had made the correct choice the first time. 

Show response: on the subject of Insomniac doing Mario, please, no. And by that I mean God, no. Among other takeaways I had from 7th gen was a strobg distaste for Western interpretations of Japanese franchises. The one allowance I might make for that is Retro Studios, which had strong leadership from Nintendo of Japan. I'm actually okay with the blank slate nature of Mario. I come for the gameplay, not the story.  I wouldn't mind a bit of interplay between M&L, but I would definitely prefer it to be left in Japanese hands.

Posted on 07/13/2021 at 12:28 PM | Filed Under Review

This game and Flashback are available as downloads on modern systems. I think they even gave Flashback a physical release.

Posted on 07/10/2021 at 04:34 PM | Filed Under Review

i was the opposite. I was like "is this the same Mario that died if he fell 3 feet?" 

Posted on 07/10/2021 at 02:43 PM | Filed Under Review

Donkey Kong Junior NES is a much better port than DK NES is. The sound is still off and the colors don't pop as much as the arcade version, but the gameplay feels all right. I still got the Arcade Archives version. I missed out on the Original Edition, but I'm not too fussed about it especially now that the real DK arcade game is available.

Mario Bros arcade is also day and night compared to the NES counterpart, and again, that game's appearances in Smash Ultimate take more of their cues from the arcade than the NES compared to older Smash games. It wasn't a bad port for the time, but I'm not going to play it when I have the real thing to play. 

Posted on 07/09/2021 at 11:52 PM | Filed Under Blogs

I got Romancing SaGa 2 and 3 mostly based on me being a fan of SaGa Frontier. They looked good for SNES games, but I wish Square had released them back in the day. They're a bit rough compared to SaGa Frontier, which is a somewhat rough game in itself.

Posted on 07/09/2021 at 11:22 PM | Filed Under Blogs

Neo-Geo systems were a regular feature of arcades around me. Mostly they had various fighting games (Fatal Fury, SamSho, and World Heroes), and then Bust-a-Move and Metal Slug when those games became popular. It's kind of neat that it works in both portable and TV form, just like the Switch.

Posted on 07/09/2021 at 11:19 PM | Filed Under Blogs

Remember this magazine ad for Sudeki from a couple years earlier?