PixlBit

"I felt like I was sliding around the whole time and could not tell where stuff was for jumping."

That pretty much describes most Sonic games to me.

I think I paid about that much for my Genesis Mini 2.  I know I wouldn't paid too much more than that anyway.

Elemental Master was made by Technosoft who also did the Thunder Force games, which are also known for their music.  So that may be why you liked the music in that one as well.

At the end of July I finally beat The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.  Yay!  Took me three months and my Switch says I spent around 100 hours on it.  I think I enjoyed about 50 percent of the game.

Now I'm playing Disney's Illusion Island.  It's a family friendly Metroidvania starring Mickey and friends in their Paul Rudish designs.  It's pretty fun although very easy.  But I'm OK with that.

I hope you get a chance to play Final Fantasy 3 (FF6).  It's one of my top five favorite games of all time.

I doubt Super Mario World is that expensive.  It was a pack-in game initially and there are many ways to play it.  It's one of my favorite Mario games.

I loved playing Magic Sword and Final Fight in arcades.

I wish we got the Parodius games in the US.  It's a shame that in the 90s, everyone thought Americans hated cute games.

Hate to break it to you, but Mega Man 3 is harder than 2.  MM2 is actually one of the easier games in the series.

The best way to play Bonk's Adventure is on the TG-16.  I wish I had a TG-16 as a kid.  Looking back on it, I think I would've really liked that console.

Here's some more 1990 games to look into:

Little Nemo: The Dream Master (NES)

Dr. Mario (NES)

Lemmings (PC)

Hate to break it to you, but MM3 is harder than MM2.  MM2 is actually one of the easier games in the series.

Yeah when I started playing Mansion of Hidden Souls, 7th Guest was the first thing I thought of.  My dad really liked the Myst games.

I think I could've had the opportunity to review the Night Trap re-release/remake/whatever it was.  But I passed on it.  Not my cup of tea and I probably had too many other things on my plate at the time.

Yeah I'd love the chance to really play Popful Mail all the way through.  It's one of the few Falcom games I haven't played yet (or much of), and I do have an interest in it.

When Lunar 1 and 2 were advertised back then, it was one of the few SEGA CD games I was interested in because that's around the time I was really into Square's 16-bit RPGs.  But I was just a teen with a limited income so I couldn't afford to get all the games and consoles I wanted.

Another thing I liked doing back then was going to outdoor flea markets and many tables would sell new PSOne games super cheap.  Like getting an unopened copy of Ridge Racer Type 4 for 3 bucks.  That's one of the reasons why my PlayStation library is so big!  After a while they stopped selling video games at these flea markets and trade days, so I stopped going.

I kind of miss the mom and pop brick and mortar retro game stores.  There was one in a local mall for the longest time called FX.  And back in college I would go to GameFellas, which is a store that one of the folks who helped start PixlBit worked at.  I might've met him and not even known it then!  When I would visit family in Alabama, I would go visit a store called Player Two.  And when I was in high school, there was another retro game store in Alabama that was about the size of a walk in closet.  It didn't have a name and might've been a bit sketchy, but you couldn't beat those prices!  I got a lot of games there.

I hope it has instructions on how to play!