PixlBit

Ah, dang. I'd kind of have enjoyed a pinball meetup, LOL. 

Stage Select:

A side questhas to be fun and not full of BS. The rewards you get for completing it, depending on how enjoyable the side quest is, can go either way. Giving a good reward to a fun side quest makes it even better. Locking a good reward behind a BS minigame increases the BS factor exponentially.

For that reason, I stuck out chocobo racing in FF7 long enough to use a gold chocobo to get Knights of the Round, Mime, Quadra Magic, and even that one crappy materia that's basically Square giving you the middle finger for raising the second best chocobo.. Ths racing and chocobo hunting wasn't hugely full of BS, especially using the racing cheat and a lot of save-scumming.

The Anju/Kafei sidequest from Majora's Mask is a great sidequest that tells a pretty complete story. The only downfall to it is that a lot of it is time-sensitive, so if you screw up something, you have to start over. But if you play it on Nintendo Switch Online, you can use save states.

The Chocobo Hot/Cold sidequest, on the other hand, is complete BS, especially for how tedious it is and given much stuff is locked behind it.After not finding anything in that miserable little pond after an hour of trying, I gave up. In terms of BS. Chocobo Hot/Cold smells like the Amarillo stockyards along I-40 on a hot day, and ranks right up there with The Spirits Within as one of Square's worst ideas. If anyone needs me, I'll be in the Angry Dome.

Cage Match: 

Going with Castlevania as a fan of the series. But I will say that, for a licensed character who has primarily existed as little more than a mascot for decades, Mickey had some pretty decent games.

Shining Force is on Sega Genesis Classics (NS/PS4/X1) and on Nintendo Switch Online, as are SF II and Phantasy Star IV.

I'm playing Etrian Odyssey sporadically, which is the closest analogue to Wizardry I can think of in recent times. Wizardry IV has an interesting story. Woodhead and Greenberg made it insanely hard, and it sold poorly. Robert Sirotek, the former president of Sirtech, said that people wanting ultra-hard games "would have to get their pleasure somewhere else." and they brought in D.W. Bradley for the next few games. He even did an interview on Youtube on the subject.

I have DQV on DS, and believe me, I've held onto that one through thick and thin. Not only is it one of my favorite Dragon Quest games, but it's worth a lot of money. As I always say, my video game collection has done better than my stock portfolio.

Yeah. It's not too hard and not too easy. It also has a lot of supplemental material.

Fire Emblem is on Switch. FFIII is part of the Pixel Remaster series, which is on Switch, PS4, and PC.

Dragon Quest IV is on DS, along with V and VI. Of the three, it's probably the easiest to find. I wish they would port these games to Switch. The first three games are there. DQV is one of the best games in the series. 

Part of the problem with Sonic is that the concept is built around speed, but the actual game design contradicts this. Too many levels penalize you for going fast, and Sonic simply doesn't have the precision of Mario when it comes to platforming. 

Switch allows save states for all of the NSO games. 

One company I recently did business with is eStarland. They sell games, but they also provide repair services. One of those services is replacement of save batteries in NES, SNES, and N64 games, and it's pretty cheap.

They have a small store in Lawton OK called Game King. Mostly I shop at Vintage Stock and Game X Change.

I remember Mansion of Hidden Souls being described as Sega's version of The 7th Guest, which is one of the two games (along with Myst) that launched CD-ROMs as a viable storage media. My parents were playing The 7th Guest when these games came out. 

Warsong was a US version of Langrisser. I have the Langrisser I & II compilation released by NISA on Switch. It has an option to switch between thw original Genesis artwork and a more modern style. 

I remember the Night Trap controversy. I never played the game. I also remember that it starred Dana Plato, the actress from Diff'rent Strokes. I think it's on modern consoles now.

As far as games on a Genesis Mini 3, which hopefully wouldn't look like the cheap Genesis 3 units made by Majesco,I think all the really good Genesis games are on consoles now. The only games I am really interested in are Lunar 1 and 2, Vay, and Popful Mail. All of these were Working Designs localizations, which apparently means that the rights to these games are pretty messy. That's a pity, too. Lunar 1 and 2 were awesome. Not only were they the best Sega had to offer in RPGs, but they were as good as Square's SNES games. Popful Mail was made by Falcom.  Other than that, I guess I wouldn't mind seeing the Genesis versions of the Mortal Kombat games. They weren't great, and the second and third games were better on SNES (the first game was a complete disaster on SNES beyond the censorship), but the first game actually had a catchu soundtrack that took advantage of the Yamaha FM Synthesizer the Genesis has on board.