PixlBit

The NES version of TMNT Arcade had a coupon for a free Personal Pan pizza on the back cover of the instruction manual. The expiration date was December 31, 1991, and given that the game was released in 1989, that's a long time to honor a coupon. I wonder if PepsiCo was kicking themselves the way Krusty the Clown was when his Krusty the Clown Olympics promo turned super expensive by the Eastern bloc boycott of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics (which was a parody of the financial beating McDonald's took in real life in 1984 for running their Olympic promo.)

I bought the Capcom bundle because it was on sale. Honestly, though, I found Capcom's beat-em-ups to be really stiff and clunky compared to Konami's and Sega's beat-em-ups, so I skipped those on SNES. I did like the D&D games, which were among their last arcade beat-em-ups. George Kamitami, the guy who founded Vanillaware and made games like Odin Sphere and Dragon's Crown, got his start on those. I definitely remember Final Fight and Captain Commando though.

The Contra Anniversary Collection on the Switch, PS4, and X1 also has the Japanese and European versions of every Contra game up through Hard Corps.

This one definitely has an interesting design. The one minus I would give it is that the explosions sometimes obscure enemies and bullets.  That said, I think I prefer Hard Corps to Contra III on SNES, and I'm generally a SNES guy otherwise.

Stage Select:

1. The Dragon Quest Oveture. Epic in an optimisitc way, the intro music to Dragon Quest always promises a grand adventure.

2. The intro to Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete. Like with the Dragon Quest Oveture, this song perfectly captures the optimistic tone of the story and of the hero, Alex, as he embarks on his quest to become a Dragonmaster. Plus, the Lunar games are a couple of games that hold their own special place in my heart.

Cage Match:

The Simpsons, easily. First of all, as a franchise, The Simpsons >>>> TMNT. The Simpsons arcade game perfectly captured the spirit of the Simpsons as seen in its earliest years, when it was fresh and new.. Given the time frame in which it was developed, the game sported the rather raw look and feel of season 1/season 2 Simpsons, with a dash of Life in Hell thrown in here and there. The plot was just an excuse to beat up on Mr. Burns, who was the villain in pretty much every early 90s Simpsons video game. It was the closest thing at the time to a playable cartoon. It also just played better than TMNT, and the Japanese version is even better than the US version. I blew an embarrassing amount of quarters on this game. It's just too bad that conflicting licensing between Konami and Acclaim kept it from being ported to SNES and Genesis.

So basically, Bart and Lisa prank-call Moe for "Amanda Huggankiss" as Leonardo, Moe shows up with a knife, the Ninja Turtles break down crying and reveal that they're really Nelson, Jimbo, Kearney, and Dolph in disguise. The Simpsons win.

I remember seeing this at rental places along with Contra: Hard Corps. I was a SNES kid, so I didn't get to play these until they were released on the Castlevania and Contra Anniversary Collections on Switch. Bloodlines is a lot gorier than SCIV. It also marked the debut of a musical piece, Sinking Old Sanctuary, that I first heard in Circle of the Moon for GBA.

I used to have Alleyway, Nintendo's Breakout-style game for Game Boy. It looked and sounded an awful lot like Arkanoid, only without the power-ups and aliens. I don't have the reflexes to smack a tiny ball with a small paddle anymore, though.

Fun fact: Breakout was originally designed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in their pre-Apple days.

Wow, so Nintendo left the door open for vandalism in AC? Those scoundrels!

Stage Select:

My biggest gaming regret was asking for Revolution-X for the SNES for my birthday. I got it. It was an awful port. In retrospect the arcade source material wasn't really an enduring classic, but hey, it was Aerosmith. Years later I bought a used copy of the PS1 game for 5 bucks. It was serviceable and I would have been reasonably satisfied with it had I owned a PS1 in early 1996. Knowing then what I know now I probably would have asked for Chrono Trigger. 

Cage Match: 

My vote goes to XCOM. That kind of turn-based strategy agrees well with me as a fan of Valkyria Chronicles and, well, Sakura Wars. Extremely well-done and detailed. I passed HZD over at the time in favor of Breath of the Wild.

Nice. Glad I could help spread the word, lol. It's a fun, charming game. Not exactly a looker compared to Final Fantasy XII or Dragon Quest VIII, but it gets the job done.