It turns out that there are a couple of Portillo's here in Phoenix.
Guess I shouldn't be surprised. A lot of people living here nowadays are Chicago and Detroit transplants. People get all surprised when they hear my family has been in Arizona for almost 100 years.
I remember playing a platformer called Alisia Dragoon at a Genesis kiosk at Walmart when I was a kid. It never made any Genesis collection, but I believe Sega did put it on the mini-Genesis.
We have Culver's all over Phoenix. I have never tried Culver's.
They do have small grocery areas in most stores I've been in, at least since the 90s, mostly selling beef and dairy products. Braum's won't open any stores that are more than a day's drive from their farms in Tuttle OK and Byars OK, I guess so they can claim their product is fresh. I've actually seen their farms. They actually drove Dairy Queen out of business in Oklahoma for ten years, that's how popular they are there.
I live in Arizona, and being in a midpoint between California and Texas, we've had both In-n-Out and Whataburger for years. I eat whatever strikes me at the time. Whataburger has an advantage of being 24 hours a day, and I work nights on the road, so its nice to be able to get something to eat that late. One local/regional burger chain I'd like to mention is Braum's in Oklahoma. I lived in Oklahoma for a long time. Not only are their burgers good, but they have some of the best ice cream out there. You can get a thick 20 oz shake or malt in any flavor you want for 3 bucks.
The N64 kind of pissed me off. Super Mario 64 was fantastic, Turok and Doom 64 were good, and then...? I will say I didn't love Rare all that much and would have traded them for Square or even Capcom or Namco in a heartbeat. Also, I'm a huge RPG addict, so the N64 was a bit like a steak-lover going to a vegan restaurant in that regard, and the final straw for me and the N64 was when Earthbound 64, one of the only two or three RPGs announced for the system (one of the others, of course, being Quest 64) went into development hell and never got released. Other than the two Zeldas, I was kind of done with the N64. So that's where my rather harsh take on its library came from. To this day the N64 is my least favorite Nintendo TV console. Nintendo EAD had good stuff, Konami had a couple of good games, that was it. I got a PS1.
Stage Select:
I'm going to offer a classic: The 7th Guest, by Trilobyte. It naturally has some of the hammiest acting you'll ever see, but it was impressive for its time. My parents played it, i kind of dabbled in a few puzzles. I mostly liked the spooky, jazzy soundtrack by George Sanger, aka "The Fat Man."
I'd also go with Haunting Ground. Its death scenes are very unsettling, and the main character was intentionally designed to make you feel helpless without the dog to protect you.
Cage Match:
Probably Soul Reaver, since it was a bit more aligned with my tastes in gaming. I didn't really play much of either one, though somehow Sir Dan Fortesque's name has stuck in my head. I think they're remaking MediEvil now.
I need to find some horror-themed games for this month. One of my childhood Halloween traditions was watching really, really bad horror movies with my dad.
Softcore pornography on a Nintendo system. Who'd a thunk it? Yes, I'm aware that plenty of Japanese only releases were more risque than what we got here. Heck, the mermaid originally lost her bikini top, not her necklace.
I like handheld gaming, but at this point I'd rather have portability as an optional feature rather than as the focus of the whole console. It's why the Switch Lite is not a product for me. Games which could just as easily be played either on a TV or on the go are something I've always wanted. I own every Nintendo console in some form except the Virtual Boy, but who didn't dream of a handheld that could play straight-up NES or SNES games? I also had both the Super Game Boy and the Game Boy Player for Gamecube.
That said, given that one of the Switch's defining features is that portability is an option, Nintendo needs to be paying attention to seeing that Switch games work just as well in portable mode as in handheld mode. And fix the freakin' drift!
My worst accident was when I got my very first new car, a 2002 Toyota Echo. I was leaving school and driving in the rain, and all of a sudden at an intersection, a Daewoo turned left right across the front of me. I didn't have time to stop, and and the road was covered with oily water in any case which made things worse. I plowed into the passenger's side.
The other driver was determined to be at fault, since I had the right of way and he had failed to notice me, but his insurance company (Shelter) dragged its feet paying me off. They tried to offer as a replacement a 1999 Toyota Echo with 30,000 miles on it. I threatened to lawyer up, and they relented.
The Switch is a lot bigger than a Vita, and the controllers are conversely a bit more cramped in handheld mode. I only use my Switch in handheld mode when I take it on trips with me. Otherwise, I treat it as a full console rather than a handheld. It stays in its dock at home. And boy, does Dragon Quest XI S look and sound great on my Samsung Model 6.
