PixlBit

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. 

I think Red Box might have removed a lot of its video game services. It was only ever a handful of AAA titles anyway ... as Justin is now saying as I type this. Anyway, I'm using GameFly to do something I haven't done in a LONG time: specifically keeping a game out just to beat it (The Last of Us 2). But now I'm enjoying it enough I might just buy it anyway and have them send me Crash Team Racing or Control. We'll see. 

Also, damn, I miss EGM so much too and remember Dan Hsu and Seanbaby and those comics with the dudes in black garb I cannot remember the name of (though I think one of them was named after Dan "Shoe" Hsu). Such great times. Trying to find this exchange between you and Hsu on Twitter. You have a link to it? 

SPLIT SECOND

God, I want NFS: Burnout. I don't agree with "I'll buy one but not the other." I'll shell ALL the money out. 

I also check the list only after I get a certain amount of trophies. I actually checked Sonic Forces cause I felt I was getting a trophy for EVERYTHING ... then I looked and I was only 15% done and there were tons of 0.03% rarity trophies. Damn, Sonic Forces. But I also wonder if there are some cases in which trophies are not hard to get, there just isn't more than 0.03% of the population willing to play a certain game enough. 

Here's an idea: Anime Wrestling Mutant League Football 2021: Pandemic Edition. Only on Steam. 

Justin, do you realize how many of my emotional issues could be solved by being an asexual? You lucky dog. You lucky, lucky dog ... 

Skyblazer looks so cool. Still remember that Game Grumps series wondering why the hell I never heard of it. On the note Angelo brings up, I miss developers having to be creative due to limitations in general. The PS5 hype where they talk about developers basically being able to do whatever the fuck they want actually made it sound less exciting to me? Mostly cause to me it sounds like that will cause them all to try to do the same thing. But I loved the diversity of that PS5 reveal lineup so I'm hoping I'm wrong about that. 

The comic was Hsu and Chan. The artist actually turned it into a monthly comic, but he moved away from them being game designers so I only got the first issue.

On that note, I found something https://imgur.com/a/fZWB3#aEsNnSr

I always thought Hsu and Chan was a better video game comic than Penny Arcade.

Stage Select:

3. Halo- This game didn't just put the Xbox on the map, it defined the FPS genre for two console generations. And unlike most launch games, its still fun to play today.

2. Super Mario World- Best Mario game. Suck it Justin

1. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild- I couldn't put this down for over 80 hours. One of my favorite games ever.

Cage Match

Stat Wars Kotor no question. It's my favorite game ever and everything the new trilogy should have been. I can't count how many times I've played this game. Also much more culturally significant. Put BioWare on the map and made every game put in moral choices. 

STAGE SELECT:

I was thinking you wanted the "best" console launch games, and that theme would have led me to a lot of of the games mentioned before my comment like BotW, Halo, Super Mario 64 etc cause you can't deny how much those games meant for their respective systems. But my personal favorite launch games? Here's that list:

Spider-Man 2 (DS): Look, it's not a great game, but for whatever reason I played the shit out of it and always looked forward to side swinging through its generic level design as sort of a brainless escape. It's one of those games that does absolutely nothing new or innovative, yet is so easy to pick up and play I would do so over and over again. Sometimes you just want run-of-the-mill action. Or at least I do. It definitely held me over in those early DS days when it was either this or playing Super Mario 64 DS with a tiny D-pad. 

Peter Jackson's King Kong (360): Ok, this is cheating because I never actually played the 360 version, but I did play the PS2 game I assume this is a remaster of and let me tell ya. This is a fucking good game. Hell yeah I want a cinematic experience in which I play a giant gorilla that rips dinosaur mouths in half. Don't let this game be forgotten. It is a treasure. There's even a Polygon article completely overhyping it: https://www.polygon.com/2019/7/8/20680953/king-kong-xbox-360-game-rayman-michel-ancel

Wave Race: Blue Storm (Gamecube): I mean, I could put Luigi's Mansion here since I actually own it and do enjoy it, but it's always been a bit of a slow game. But when the Gamecube first came out, this game's water graphics and physics blew my 11-year-old mind.

I've heard people (specifically, YouTube channel Game Sack) say the controls are more stiff than Wave Race 64 and they don't like the sarcastic announcer in Blue Storm and I definitely believe those criticisms despite never playing the N64 game. It could be a bit hard to make some of those turns. But damn I loved renting Blue Storm. So fun and graphically hypnotizing. 

CAGE MATCH:

I have played far too little of KOTOR to have an informed opinion, but I've never played anything of Tales of Vesperia. I'm gonna vote for Tales of Vesperia cause that game is not attached to a fan base that annoys the living fuck out of me.*

*: Star Wars fans in general; maybe the KOTOR-specific fan base is fine, but my God has the more general SW peanut gallery soured me on that franchise.  

That episode helped me through a long day of yard work. Thanks for that. I still kick myself when I hear Julian talk about old magazines. I tossed out hundreds, HUNDREDS of old game mags. Many EGMs especially. Overall I dont remember all I was subbed to at one point  but off the top of my head: 

EGM, Tips and Tricks, Game Now, Gamepro, Official Playstation Magazine, Official Xbox Magazine, Nintendo Power, Edge, Game Informer, another Playstation US Offical Magazine (or something) and maybe another. 

I kept these things going for years. One day I was cleaning out my room and just decided to toss them since they took up half a closet. If anything I wish I had know people wanted them so I could have given them away. This was back in 2010 probably. 

If true, I had no idea Justin was asexual. Unless I misheard him because I was probably cutting the grass or weedwacking. That blew my mind because of how much percent of his brain is taken up by Chun Li lol.

On to some game talk!

Stage Select 

3. Soul Calibur (Dreamcast): I actually got a DC and this game towards the end of its cycle when it was really cheap but I played the hell out of it. It's still one of the few fighters I can pull out and have fun with without having to relearn everything. Also Sophitias grab (you know the one) was a young man's dream.

2. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Wii) Yes that's right, the real Zelda! Unlike the open world, "oh I need to eat food or die" crap. NOTE: I did enjoy Breath of the Wild, please dont hurt me. This game was everything I wanted when I got the Wii but to be fair I wish I had played it on Gamecube. I havent went back to this one but I'm currently playing Ocarina of Time and want to one day.

1. Resistance Fall of Man (PS3) This game was amazing. I dont know why it didnt get more love. Very interesting guns, alternate timelines, extra weapons after you finish the game and so much more. I still remember being blown away by shooting out specific parts of a window instead of it shattering on contact. I want a reboot Sony!

Cage Match: KOTOR wins for being the only thing Star Wars that I actually know about. Yes its true, I've never seen the original or new trilogy. I saw Episode 1, slept during Episode 2, and honestly dont know about Episode 3. So for me, KOTOR is the end all, be all of Star Wars canon. I regret nothing.

Stage Select: I've rarely had consoles right when they launched. As a kid it was a problem of getting the money together and then finding the dang system. But let me focus on the one time I was there on launch day: Game Boy Advance. Story time! We were traveling across the country to get home after a family get together for my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary. It was after 10 o'clock on the night of June 10, 2001, as we stopped in a town in Nebraska. I had saved up the money for the GBA but preordering consoles wasn't really a thing back then, but I begged my parents to take me to see if we could reserve one to pick up the next morning. Toys R Us was already closed for the day, so we went in Walmart and my heart sank as the employees there told us they would not be selling the GBA till June 13, two days after the official release set by Nintendo. On the morning of June 11, after checking out of our hotel, my parents agreed to take me to Toys R Us before we got back on the road. (I was crushed after the news from Walmart.) All the signage in Toys R Us said June 13 for the GBA but I asked an employee anyway, and he told me that they would not stock them on the shelves till the 13th but their boss had said they could sell them as soon as they had come in. THE TRUCK HAD ARRIVED THAT MORNING! I had enough money for the system and one game but my dad let me get two, Mario Advance and, most importantly, Castlevania: Circle of the Moon. That game blew my mind! The vocal kyrie (KEER-ree-ay, a traditional part of the mass as a musical form) playing on the title screen was enough to do that alone, but I had not yet played Symphony of the Night, so I didn't realize how badly the castle was designed or how unbalanced the random card drop system was, though the horrible darkness of the screen was obvious to me, but none of those things deterred me from loving that game to death. I'd be very hesitant about replaying it, since I know it pales in comparison to the games that followed it (and the one that came before) but I can't think of a game that I actually bought on launch day that made a bigger impact on me.

Cage Match: KotOR because I do actually intend to play that game one day. By the way, if you guys are gonna talk spoilers, I hope you give us fair warning. I have managed to not be spoiled on KotOR somehow all these years later. The dream lives on!