PixlBit

Played this one on NES, wasn't a huge fan, though I remember the punny name. There sure were a lot of games inspired by Rambo and Platoon at that time. 

Joust was a favorite of mine that I played with my sister at home on our computer. Nowadays Balloon Fight (a great game in its own right that was the first game ever produced by Nintendo's third president, Satoru Iwata) seems to be the only fix we get for that sort of game. I have a mini Dig-Dug arcade machine, and I have DK Junior and Moon Patrol on Switch.

I actually played the computer version of Star Raiders first and got good at it, but I could never figure out the 2600 version. I always preferred Activision's Star Master on 2600.

Happy birthday buddy. The Nintendo and Square Enix stuff looked really neat. One of these days I'm going to make it to PAX. 

For your birthday I give you a gift card for Whataburger, in honor of BurgerTime. Hopefully you're not a vegetarian though, that gift wouldn't do you much good.

I'd like to make a suggestion for the next cage match: a match-up between two great Zelda-like action-adventure games from the 5th generation starring cutesy versions of Japanese folk heroes. 

Konami's Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon (N64) vs. Square's Brave Fencer Musashi (PS1).

I always liked the cabinet artwork for Pac-Man. I think I liked it better than the Japanese art, for once.

Now here's a bizarre version of Pac-Man. This is the box art for the Atari 8-bit versions. I actually had this box art.

Amistrad was the one you were thinking of there.

I had a couple of observations on this podcast. Firstly, a game where Fire Emblem characters appeared in the real world was brought up. I think that was actually addressed in Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE, which was basically Persona with Fire Emblem characters in modern day Japan. It was actually Nintendo Power that compared Hybrid Heaven to MGS, though that might have been due to early appearance of Johnny Slade strongly resembling Snake.

Anyway:

Stage select:

1. One of my most memorable "Oh Shit" moments was fighting the boss at the top of the Cultists' Tower in Final Fantasy VI, when, after an hour and a half, he killed my entire party with the Ultima spell right before he died. It was my first time playing the game, so I naturally came without the Life 3 spell. I had to take a day off from FFVI after that one.

2. The first time I encountered an Arch-Vile in Doom II.

3. My first time encountering a Lynel in Breath of the Wild and it noticing me. Nintendo sure figured out how to make Lynels appropriately menacing for the 21st century. Imagine if all the Lynels you saw in the original game were as strong as the ones in BotW.

Cage Match:

I didn't have a lot of experience with Power Stone until I got the PSP Power Stone collection. I probably would have gotten it if I had a Dreamcast. I may have played it at a Dreamcast kiosk here or there. But either way, the Final Fantasy VII fanboy in me gives the nod to Ehrgeiz here. Nothing in the fighting game world at the time could beat Cloud, Tifa, and Sephiroth. The home version included a roguelike dungeon crawler. 

I would actually like Nintendo to consider doing a Smash Bros as a 3-D fighter along the lines of Power Stone and Ehrgeiz, however. 

1981 was when I started playing. My first game was a Donkey Kong arcade machine at the Ak-Chin commissary in Arizona. At home my mom introduced me to a charming little game on the TRS-80 called Bee Wary.

My first encounter with Pac-Man was the weird 2600 version. My first arcade encounter with Pac-Man was Ms. Pac-Man. I enjoyed it, but my favorite game in the arcades was Donkey Kong. Even then I was a huge Nintendo nut, as I also loved Mario Bros in the arcade and played a lot of its home versions. I also played the Atari version of Berzerk.

I actually enjoyed tinkering with the Junction System. As unbalanced as it was, it was satisfying AF to be able to demolish enemies.