PixlBit

The arcade collection was kind of disappointing. Konami actually has one of the best classic arcade libraries, rivalling those of Namco, Atari, and Nintendo. They could have had Frogger, Gyruss, Scramble, Super Cobra, and so many other games on it. I guess since most of these are Arcade Archives titles it doesn't matter so much, but the SNK collection had a lot of games that were released separately as AA titles, so it could have been done I guess.

Stage Select: I've always wanted to see a Mortal Kombat turn-based RPG done as a collaboration between Netherrealm Studios and Square Enix, and that dream actually dates back to when Mortal Kombat 3 and Final Fantasy VI were the latest and hottest games. I also wouldn't mind Obsidian taking a crack at Mortal Kombat, and they'd honestly be better suited for it, but Obsidian is now owned by Microsoft and I'd rather not have to buy an Xbox to play a MK RPG. I'd want two fully explorable worlds - a fully explorable Earthrealm with locales like Liu Kang's Shaolin temple, Shang Tsung's Island, Chicago and the surrounding environs, all of them connected through airports, as well as a fully explorable Outworld where you get to visit the home realms of the Edenians (Kitana's people). the Shokan (Goro's people), the Tarkatan (Baraka's tribe). Either a world map like a classic Japanese RPG, or a fully explorable world along the lines of Fallout or Breath of the Wild. The time frame would be set during the first three games, where you'd witness the original Shaolin tournament and the fall of Earthrealm at the end of Mortal Kombat II. I'd like to see turn-based kombat with four-person parties composed of various Mortal Kombat characters, with their signature moves either being executed through menu commands or simple controller-motion techniques at the player's choice. And don't forget the Fatalities, which could be the game's stand-in for limit breaks. The last dungeon would be Shao Kahn's palace. The opening would be a playable flashback sequence that ends with the death of the original Kung Lao at Goro's hands 500 years in the past. However, like with FF6, the playable characters would be overall an ensemble cast with no clear main character and the story occasionally shifing focus around between say, Liu Kang, Scorpion, or Kitana much like how FF6 shifted between Terra and Celes. The soundtrack would be a collaboration between Dan "Toasty" Forden and Yoko Shimomura. I've always felt that Mortal Kombat has far more lore than can really be explored within the limits of a 1-on-1 fighting game.

Cage Match: Crystalis wins this round by being a great NES action-adventure. Journey to Silius looked pretty neat though.

I remember Joust 2 from Midway Arcade Treasures 1 on PS2 and Gamecube. That was the best Midway collection we ever got. Now WB won't even touch Midway's old catalogue.

Mine too. It was a great game and was cool when you beat the pterodactyl.

When Joust was presented to Williams brass, they were like "WTF is this? What's this flap buttom for?" Nintendo of America said the same thing about the Jump button on Donkey Kong. Back then, they really wanted more shooting games. Both DK and Joust were huge successes. 

Ironically, when Donkey Kong became popular, Atari licensed Kangaroo from Sunsoft because they wanted a platformer to compete with DK, prioritizing a release of Kangaroo over Gravitar, which was a vector shooting game developed in-house at Atari. The developers of Gravitar were upset and sent out a company-wide memo calling Kangaroo "trash." Kangaroo went on to become a decent-sized hit, while Gravitar was a bomba. 

I would play Kangaroo with an onion tied to my belt, which was the style at the time.

The key seller is in the town of Rimuldar (the town immediately south of the eastern cave.) You have to go around the outer edge of the town map, outside of the water that surrounds the buildings. You just have to be careful not to go too far or you'll exit to the world map. In the northwestern corner you'll find a doorway into a building where the shopkeeper will sell you keys at 16 gold a pop.

You need to go southeast from Tantegel Castle, not southwest. You'll find what you're looking for there.

Dragon Quest II was tough near the end. It got hit with budget and time constraints late in development so a lot of stuff that was supposed to be in the end game, wasnt, leaving you under-leveled. 

Dragon Quest III was where Dragon Quest really grew its beard. It's the best RPG on NES, hands down.

Ultima III: Exodus also had resurrect from ashes. Unless your character was super leveled up it was faster just to say bye-bye to him/her and roll a replacement.

The Angry Video Game Nerd did a funny video about ROB and the two games made for ROB.

Ah, the joys of save-scumming.

I beat the Game Boy Color version of Dragon Quest ! (released in a double-pack with DQII). I downloaded Dragon Quest 1-3 on Switch and am probably about halfway through DQI, and have just gotten to Africa on DQ3. DQ3's world map is based on the real world, and there's even a town in North America that's fighting for its independence from an evil empire, LOL.

Joust was awesome. I had the Atari 8-bit version of it at home. My sister would play it from time to time. Unfortunately, most of Midway/Williams's pre-Mortal Kombat arcade library has fallen into obscurity now because Warner Bros, which now owns Midway IPs doesn't seem interested in it. We haven't seen a compilation of their games released in almost ten years, when they released a collection for PS3 and 360.  Arcade Archives did great at bringing Nintendo's library to Switch, but they only publish Japanese arcade games and not American games.

So I've contented myself with getting my Joust fix through Balloon Fight and Vs. Balloon Fight on Switch. Balloon Fight was Satoru Iwata's first game. He also handled the NES version of Joust, which was published by HAL.