PixlBit

While the censorship certainly hurt sales, with the SNES version selling 1/4 of what the Genesis version sold, the port was bad for reasons beyond the censorship. The sound and graphics (aside from the blood and gore) were spot-on, but the game itself was very buggy. The combos were broken due to lag, and when two players threw projectiles at each other, when the first projectile hit, both disappeared. Not only did that look bad, but MK's designers deliberately wanted projectiles to pass through each other as opposed to Street Fighter, where projectiles canceled each other out. One of the fun things in the arcade was having two Sub-Zeros freezing each other and then having one player try to be fast enough to where they would thaw out sooner and be able to go in for the kill. The Genesis version didn't have these bugs and played a lot better than the SNES version. According to Ed Boon, the issue was apparently that the SNES couldn't handle both making the characters big on the screen and good hit detection at the same time. The character sprites in MK2 were somewhat smaller on the SNES, and the game played a lot better.

Despite the fact that MK was one of the main motivations behind the creation of the industry-wide ESRB ratings system, MK2 came out on the SNES and Genesis exactly one week before the ESRB ratings system went live. Nintendo put its own content warning label on the front of the SNES MK2 box. 

My best friend who was my Atari 2600 go-to got this in the last year the 2600 was the main system before he got a NES. This game was pretty amazing for its time. You'd have never thought just a couple of years earlier that the 2600 was capable of running a game like Solaris. The worst parts of the game were those "snake" enemies that would materialize out of thin air and were incredibly hard to hit. Especially if your base planet was destroyed, which would cause the screen to be red with constant lightning flashing and your controls to be inverted while you were on that map. I had Star Raiders on the Atari XE, so I got into the Solaris game pretty well. I do wish it was available on the Atari Flashback Classics on Switch.

I knew of the Williamses in the 90s, at Sierra's peak. They were pretty renowned in game developer circles. 

I actually learned of Gay Blade through a blog called the CRPG Addict, whose author is trying to play through every computer RPG ever made. He occasionally dabbles in console RPGs when it's pertinent to the development of computer RPGs. I was surprised it existed and it was exactly what it said it was. The big bad of the game was apparently Pat Buchanan, a politician known for espousing anti-LGBT views.

I enjoyed this series, especially the interviews with Garriott and Amano, and hope they continue it at some point. A lot of the stuff in the documentary is stuff I already knew of, but it was great to see interviews with the actual people behind it. 

The one game with a card battle system I played was Baten Kaitos on Gamecube. I think that Nintendo liked Baten Kaitos so much that they ended up buying Monolithsoft. And that's how we got Xenoblade Chronicles. It looked like a card-based version of FFX. Even one of the characters looked like Wakka.

Somehow, Arizona has a hockey team. 

Stage Select:

My first selection is "Samus Aran, Galactic Warrior" from Super Metroid. However, it's at its most epic when combined with the sound effects and visuals of Samus's brutal beatdown of Mother Brain after Mother Brain kills the baby Metroid. That is the single best example of an angry "mama bear" in a video game, all without dialogue or a cut scene.

My second selection is "Fight to the Death" from Final Fantasy XII. This plays during the battle with Vossler, who has betrayed the party and turned the Dusk Shard over to the Empire. However, Vossler didn't betray the party out of a desire for power, he did so in the belief that it would save the lives of his countrymen rather than see their lives lost in what he felt was a futile struggle. He was misguided, but was still a "son of Dalmasca" at heart.

Cage Match:

Voting for Cyberpunk on this one. My enjoyment of Witcher 3 and like of cyberpunk games combined with my prejudice against licensed titles wins the day here.

P.S. Still trying to get in touch with y'all about contributing a few pieces to the site. 

This game was, and still is, awesome. One of the best playable casts of characters, great villains, and even a good supporting cast. Its localization was top notch. It still looks good on current gen systems. It was the only 360 exclusive game I really cared about. 

Unfortunately, almost every JRPG developer who threw in with Microsoft lost a lot of money, including Namco. Microsoft needs to face the cold, hard facts that Japan will never be receptve to the Xbox brand and that the Xbox will never be the first choice for most American fans of Japanese games, either. I wish they would stop trying to moneyhat Japanese developers.

I saw this in demos at the now defunct Service Merchandise. At the time, however, I was much more into fighting games, Super Metroid, and a rekindled interest in RPGs ignited by my dad's physical therapisf bringing me her son's copy of Final Fantasy 6. So I didn't really play this until it got re-released on the SNES Classic and on Switch Online.

 I saw 40 Year Old Virgin with a buddy and Dukes of Hazzard and Revenge of the Sith with girls I was dating. I started seeing my wife later that year. Gaming wise, there was Resident Evil 4, Atelier Iris, Final Fantasy XI Online, and especially Dragon Quest VIII, which my wife and I played together.