In response to your question on this podcast, yes, there was a Sakura Wars game released in the US: So Long, My Love, which was localized and released in the US at the end of March 2010 by NIS America for the PS2 and Wii. The PS2 version got a deluxe edition which I bought.
This game was rough even by 1980s RPG standards. It definitely laid a foundation for great things to come, for sure.
On the NES, Dragon Quest/Warrior was the better series. Maybe I'd have felt different if FF3 had seen a US release, since it apparently squeezed out every drop of performance the NES could manage, but as things stand now, the SNES is where Final Fantasy really started to shine. Dragon Quest was better suited to work within the framework of the NES.
Fun fact: a lot of the basic design work for FF came from an American programmer, Nasir Gebelli, who worked on a lot of computer games during the 1980s through his company, Sirius Software, and who was one of the design leads of Secret of Mana.
My life has changed relatively little with this. I still work every other week (been mostly staying home on off weeks). My lady friend gifted my two rolls of TP, and I was actually in the store early enough that they still had it. I don't understand the hoarding. TP won't protect you from the coronavirus, and people are acting like the virus is an EMP that will knock out the power grid and the water supply. Our governor has mostly taken the old head in the sand approach to the pandemic despite calls from our Senator (the one that actually won her election rather than the one that got a participation trophy when McCain died) to be more proactive.
Mostly I've been gaming and working on my arcade mini-cabinet. I'm thinking of entering it in the state fair as an arts and crafts project.
Oh, and to answer your question as to why I get games like Witcher 3 and Doom Eternal on Switch over PS4 despite the latter system being somewhat beefier: I really like the Switch, and unless a game is severely broken on Switch (which neither TW3 or Doom Eternal are, Witcher 3 is actually an extremelly polished port that runs very well on Switch despite being one of the most technically demanding games of the past 10 years), it's my platform of choice I like having games like Witcher 3 in the same place as games like Breath of the Wild. Also, I would like to encourage [good] third parties to continue with this kind of support for Nintendo, and for Nintendo to work with [good] third parties. Nintendo is the only console maker whose first-party lineup I care about, so having Mario, Zelda, and Fire Emblem together with Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Witcher, Mortal Kombat, Resident Evil, etc is what I want to see - and not under the aegis of Microsoft or Sony, either, which means I do not want Nintendo to go third party.
Finally, if I were really so concerned with top-end graphics, I'd just build a gaming rig. The difference between Switch and PS4 is not the difference between the SNES and the Game Boy. The Witcher 3 runs very well on Switch, and CD Projekt Red even fit the entire game onto one cartridge. Until a recent patch that allowed you to carry over PC saves onto Switch was released, the Switch version had no install file, the entire game ran straight off the cartrdige. That was pretty amazing. I'd like to see more games that don't require obnoxious amounts of HDD or SD card storage.
Stage select:
1. Sakura Wars 2 for Saturn. I loved the fifth game in the series, which was the last PS2 game I bought new ten years ago (wow!) I love the SRPGs of that pedigree in general, which includes Valkyria Chronicles.
2. Burning Rangers for Saturn. As Casey said above, it looks like fun. Another 1UPer did a really neat write-up on Burning Rangers.
Side note: I actually own Panzer Dragoon Saga and have played it. Its battle system has a lot of shooting elements from the shooter games in it.
Can't really think of any others. I would definitely have said Mother 3 had I not bought a reproduction cartridge with the fan translation and played it.
Cage match: Both great games. Going to go with Galaga overall since it's more polished from both the gameplay and presentation standpoints, but Centipede was probably Atari's best game, and it's certainly the game I play the most on Atari collections.
I know I submitted a bunch of cage matches, and this was one I picked, but I actually have one I'd like to submit for future consideration: Dig-Dug versus Mr. Do!
This makes more sense than any actual GTA content released in the past ten years.
I'm a health care worker. Not only am I still working, my job is crazier than ever. As I write this, I have eight hours left of my shift. Come 8 am, I'm off for a whole week, then back to the grind next Monday.
Witcher 3, trying to find Langrisser 1 & 2.
Of course, in FFIV, most of the deaths ended up being reversed by deus ex machinae.
I can see your point, we're supposed to be self-disciplined, our pets are kind of hostages to fate. But he won't be the worse for wear, and he'll lose that winter weight in due time. I kind of got lazy too during winter, at least in my off days. But as part of my prep for Havasupai, I've been hiking on Piestewa Peak, which is one of the many mountain preserves in Phoenix, and it's underscored how much work I have to do in five months. And during the summer, with my work schedule and the intense heat in the Valley, it's going to be very difficult to do hiking on work weeks since my time off from work is the prime midday hours when the temperature is the highest, while I'll be working through the cooler dusk and dawn hours.
One of the nice things about Phoenix is that there are many mountain parks here, right within city limits, with the big prize around here being Camelback Mountain. There is also good hiking up north in Sedona.
