Like Snee, I have only a passing familiarity with R&C, given that my tastes run more towards RPGs and Nintendo. Sounds like you're having a ball. What does the Decryptor do that you hate it so much?
Stage select:
1. Breath of the Wild. One of my favorite games of all time and certainly my favorite game of the 2010s. There will never be a launch title to equal it unless Nintendo makes an even more amazing Zelda as the Switch 2's launch title.
2. Super Mario 64. it wasn't just a game, it was a marvel of technology that showed off the promise and potential of the N64, even if the systen fell short of that.
3. Final Fantasy IV. Got the SNES off to a great start with a game that was a huge leap over its NES predecessors. The music was amazing in its time.
Cage Match:
Tales of Vesperia wins easily. Beautiful anime graphics that still held up when it was re-released on current systems, a thoughtful story, good combat, and a consistently likeable cast of characters. The playable characters had good chemistry and were one of my favorite playable casts, the bad guys, especially Duke and Yeager, were quite villainous, and even supporting characters like Don Whitehorse were memorable. The standout was Yuri, voiced by Troy Baker, but this was one of the best localizations of a Japanese game I've seen.
Stage select:
A lot of developers and franchises. Lunar, Ultima (and Origin Systems itself), Maxis and Will Wright. I miss Square and Enix being separate competitors and always think of what might have been had Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within not been made.
Cage Match:
I played Contra quite a bit on NES, and dabbled a little bit in Contra III. I remember the commercials for Contra: Hard Corps and I always wanted to play that. Operation C was a pretty competent Game Boy title. The first Game Boy game I played that wasn't a cut-down version of a NES game was Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters, and that game was actually better than the NES original (no cheap falls anymore). And then there were Final Fantasy Adventure and Link's Awakening.
I lived in Oklahoma at the time and there was actually a supermarket near me called the Super C Mart.
Gamingwise, Link's Awakening was the best of 1993, and I did play Doom quite a bit. In the arcades I was big into Mortal Kombat II.
Apparently the story in the US version was created specifically for the US version. The Japanese version had a typical sci-fi anime plot.
I used to see the Gold Box games, but I never had the opportunity to play them. I guess now you can play them online on DOS emulators. At that time I associated that kind of combat with Ultima 3, which I was familiar with through the NES version.
There was also a 1994 D&D game called Ravenloft that I always wanted to try. I bought it on Good Old Games. It's a first person RPG, and unfortunately the mouse-based combat moves way too fast. :( Let's just say Final Fantasy VI is in no danger of being dethroned as my favorite RPG of 1994.
I wish the collection had included Rondo of Blood, or at least Dracula X on SNES. It was a step back from IV in some ways, but it had great music and graphics.
I kind of hope that if Konami does a Castlevania Collection 2, they include Castlevania 64 and Legacy of Darkness. Everybody kind of dumps on those in favor of Symphony of the Night, but they were a good effort at 3-D Castlevania, especially LoD. At least Nintendo pushed them to try 3-D graphics.
I haven't picked up the Trials of Mana remake yet. I still want to get Xenoblade Chronicles Remastered and The Outer Worlds. Too many games, man.
I actually skipped out on SNK Heroines for the same reason - very fanservicey - and I used to play a lot of DoA 4 when I had a 360. I did get Samurai Shodown, though, and that game is really good.
After I completed the main story, I'd play multiplayer games with four teams of 2-3 bots apiece, give them stuff like grenades and rocket launchers. Surprisingly the unarmed bots were the toughest if they got close.
