I'd be tempted to say maintain the same artstyle, because I'd LOVE to see what that would even look like, but I think anything they came up with would be pretty wild. Not sure how they'd make the fruit's movement patterns stay useful, but Borderlands has shotgun that fires a wave pattern, so maybe they could just keep them as they are.

Honestly, I think Christian Mythology is a pretty untapped source of media... kind of. The whole reason I stopped watching Supernatural after a few seasons is that once the angels showed up, the ENTIRE SHOW became nothing but Sam and Dean vs. the Angels™, because they abandoned all other mythologies, and it became a petty-drama-filled snoozefest. We also have plenty of Christian-themed games, but as we've both said, most of them suck. I'd love to see a game that's just a game, but focuses on Christian Mythology the same way EVERY OTHER GAME uses either Greek or Norse Mythology; give those two a rest and show me some seraphim! Whichever side the protagonist would be on, just imagine wading into large-scale battles with Biblically-accurate angels and demons! They'd be so much more interesting and abstract than YET ANOTHER fight with a kraken. I've SEEN Kraken! Megaten is the only franchise I can think of to even include anything with a rank above archangel, and they have to share the spotlight with almost every other world religion.

Quick blog note: as a life-long heretic (branded at birth; it's a long story), I also approve of Spiritual Warfare; it's a surprisingly solid game, and the final battle, where you're battling Satan in the depths of Hell with a giant jawbone is the most metal thing I've ever seen on the NES. Really, the entire endgame goes OFF THE RAILS in a pleasantly surreal kind of way. In my Zelda retrospective, it and Deadly Towers were the only "Zelda clones" I looked at that really captured the spirit of exploration found in the original Zelda.

Been dying to write the transcript of this for the sake of it.

"I often get asked how much I still collect these days. The answer is, well... not really a whole lot. In fact, it's pretty tough to collect. It's almost impossible to find good deals these days as people know what they have and thrift stores are usually dead zones as far as retro games. Not only that, but stupid YouTube channels like Game Sack artificially inflate game prices. Anytime Game Sack says a game is good, prices go up! Man, really pisses me off, I wish Game Sack didn't exist so that prices could stay low. Stupid Game Sack!

It sure is easy to blame YouTubers for increasing game prices. Yep, people enjoy the content and keep watching said YouTubers. Hmm, what a conundrum. Thankfully, there are a lot of other ways to play retro games these days. My favorite are Everdrives and optical drive emulators which let me play games using real hardware. These are reliable enough these days that it's actually curbed my actual collecting. But, maybe you'd rather emulate or use solutions like Mister or Retropie. Whatever works for you is best. Just keep in mind that what's best for you doesn't mean that everyone else should be doing the same exact thing. Just let people live, man."

Whew, glad I got that out of my system. Anyway yeah, I knew it all along that YouTubers were to blame! Etcetera, etcetera.

Yup! I'm actually not sure if it depends on the version you own, though. I got my EverDrive in December of 2018, if I remember right, and that one can play DD games.

My pleasure; it's also nice to see people who weren't there, but still get it, so us old fucks don't have to bang on and on about learning your history. I mean, do you have ANY IDEA how hard it is to repeatedly bludgeon someone with a quad cane? They really aren't built for combat, but a war hammer doesn't really support ambulation, so can ya gonna do. Anyway, with all of the entries that address it, you've done a good job of figuring out why this or that had its appeal, and acknowledging whether or not it aged well rather than, "Well, it's Zelda, so it's obviously a masterpiece for all time."

Age has been kinder to Mario 3, but the experience of grabbing a warp whistle, riding that tornado wherever your whims might take you, descending into a cavern, going for a series of jumps, TOTALLY EATING IT, falling for a minute and a half through what can only be described as Plumbers' Purgatory, dropping into pitch black water that is also crystal clear, swimming to the bottom, entering a pipe, coming out a nuclear waterfall into some weird underground spring, navigating mutant buzzy beetles that throw rainbow ice blocks at you, and wondering the next morning whether that was even real or not because the game is so damn big you might not be able to find it again so easily... THAT is lost. That was lost the moment Super Mario All-Stars added a save feature and detailed backgrounds; the game wasn't so weird or dreamlike anymore, and everything was accessible.

Nice! Hope you enjoy it!

I also wanted to say that as someone who played and totally obsessed over the original Legend of Zelda when it first came out, you absolutely fucking NAILED that entry. I've been saying that its appeal is lost on today's audience because we just play games differently now, and I think Mario 3 has that to an extent, too; I've probably given you that rant already. Legend of Zelda was my WORLD when I first made my way through it, but honestly, I don't think I ever want to play it again. Mega Man 2, also; that one took me ages to finish, though I will play it again and again, because I've gone through it so many times that traversing the bullshit is all second nature, but unlike Zelda, the visuals are a lot more interesting, and the basic mechanics work a lot better. I still agree with you that it's overrated, though; every time I hear people say that Mega Man 2 is the absolute best of the series, I immediately wonder if they've played any of the other games, because most of what followed is better.

Well... Are you ready or not?

Hehe, I liked your huge collection

Sadly not, but I wish I did. That's awesome you have one! I guess that makes you the only person I know who actually owns a 64DD, so that's pretty cool. Fortunately, I was able to play the game on actual hardware using an EverDrive cart, which is nice, because you really need the N64 analog stick for that extra precision. I was able to try out every 64DD game through that. Well, aside from the sequel to Doshin the Giant, since that game requires you to do some weird disk swapping, for no apparent reason. Hard4Games did a good video on that game. [Link]

A lot of collectors are doing that lately; it's going to be interesting to see what that's going to do to the market overall. Ah, yes, that certainly does change things, too! In that case, the physical collection would be for things that have sentimental/historical value or neat extras (manuals, posters, maps, etc.). The lightbulb was on, but it's one of those swirly ones, so it took me until now to completely light up. Anyway, that's probably going to change the market quite a bit, too; there are going to be a loooooot of sellers upset that they can't unload Little Samson for HALF A FUCKING CAR, or whatever it's up to at this point.

I could see it, and for the right price, I could get into a remake, though that price is usually very low. That said, if the remake (and I'm 97% sure remake isn't the correct term, but everyone's got strong opinions on those, and none of those strong opinions agree) is transformative enough, I'll gladly jump right in. A good example is the bafflingly-named Trials of Mana remake... equally bafflingly named Trials of Mana. Squenix usually totally eats it when it comes to action-based anything, but I was cautiously optimistic, and the demo played well enough, so I picked it up, and while throwing Devil May Cry combat into a Mana game would've been more than enough for me (I've been saying that since before even the Secret of Mana remake was announced), they added and tweaked until the whole game was thrown right on its head. I've got my dream team, and I almost always stick with them in the SNES original, if I'm not going for a specific story path (Reiss as a star lancer, Hawk as a nightblade, and Charlotte as a sage), but my first run was Durangela and Charlotte, and I think I might have a new one. I had Duran with turbo-charged elemental sabers and reduced MP consumption, and both Angela and Charlotte with infinite MP just because of the builds I put together. THAT is transformative. That and the environments were crafted with such love and care; I couldn't believe what I was playing. Anyway, that sort of thing will certainly get my money, but most remakes aren't quite on that level.

There are probably a lot of reasons spinnin' around in the ol' blender that caused me not to be a collector, and a lot of it boils down to my own sanity, I think. I used to collect all kinds of things (this was long before video game collection was a thing), and I always had to have a full set, because THAT IS THE GOAL YOU DO NOT STRAY FROM THE GOAL OR YOU ARE A FAILURE. I think a lot of that stems from the OCD, which manifested at a really early age; I remember when it was beginning, just sitting in class, thinking I was going to wind up in an asylum someday, because back then, mental health was a binary sane/insane dynamic, so instead of the more nuanced discussions we have today, you were either believed to be normal or tear-your-own-blood-out-and-throw-it crazy. Society still doesn't have a healthy view on mental illness, but we've come a hell of a long way in the last 20 years or so. Anyway, with OCD, collection becomes a self-fueling addiction for me, and I just had to stop myself. That and spending several years of my life as a Buddhist, and several more as a Hindu did a lot to distance myself from material things. There's a lot more behind that but honestly, I don't even fully understand all of it, so I'll leave it at that.

I don't; I almost never buy remakes of anything when I have the original, and that was maybe going to be an exception, because they tweaked the class system a bit, but then I found out that a bigger and better tweak was the Maeson Mix hack, which I've loved since the first time I ever played it, so I'll be sticking with that. It certainly looks like the pixel remaster completely ignores that the 3D remake ever existed, as far as I can tell. The story is still kind of in the background, like in the first Final Fantasy, but it takes some interesting turns, even if you know most of them already; it's mostly that the framing is a lot better.

I suppose I can see the appeal of collecting for historical significance; it just doesn't appeal to me, personally. Then again, I don't really do the collection thing in the first place, so that's probably lost on me, anyway.

I saw the baseball game you did have on the list, and just thought I'd mention it; the final installment (Super Ultra Baseball 2, which never left Japan) is probably the best of the bunch... but baseball is really boring to me, so I've never finished 9 innings of a game before.

Also, I must say my piece on Final Fantasy 3. The story is pretty interesting, but a lot of it happens before the events of the game, and the 3D remake absolutely BUTCHERS this by trying to shift the focus to the protagonists, who aren't quite as well fleshed out as a one-dimensional walking anime trope. It's Dorge, Unne, Zande, and to a lesser extent, Archmage Noah's story, and you're just doing the (functionally) silent protagonist thing. It's something that gets overlooked by a lot of players (and even the people who made the 3D remake), like the fact that the first Final Fantasy also has an insane plot that places it in a post-post-apocalyptic world, so my fussy ass had to say something.

Gotcha. I happened upon the Game Gear version because my grandmother, of all people, had it. Not even sure why; the only thing she played on the thing was Klax, and I'm not sure why I picked it up and played far enough to get to a boss fight, but I'm glad it turned out that way. I am the type of person to play every sin- wait; gotta do it the YouTube clickbait thumbnail way:
I play every game on a compilation!
EVERY. SINGLE. ONE.
Because Arcade is such a vast platform, my knowledge of what's out there is spotty, and I never know when I might discover a new Wizard Fire or Crude Buster.

Ugh... typo... I meant to say that I don't count the historical significance of things. Maybe it's personal bias because I lived video game history, but history is history, and good is good, and aged well is aged well. The original Legend of Zelda was good in its time, but because the way we play games changed so radically over the last several decades, it aged like bread. But yes, I like weird shit, and the NES covers that wonderfully.

Thanks! Before that, it was probably Super Mario Bros., believe it or not; that took me about 12 years to finish, because I got the first Zelda before I got very far, and that kinda derailed my progress. Oddly enough, around 1999, a friend of mine was REALLY into Super Mario Bros., which I hadn't even thought about in a very long time, and that was what coerced me to push my skill beyond its usual limits and finally beat the game. My Mario skills would never be pushed harder until I played a hack called Tower RE.

Coming from you, I know the Contra comment is hyperbole; I just felt like giving my hot take that I've always found Contra to be kinda mid out there. Super Contra 3 is pretty good, and Hard Corps is excellent, but couldn't really get all that into the original. Of course, my favorite Contra on the NES is Contra Force, so I'm used to being wrong.

Yeah, if you're doing the original hardware thing, DuckTales 2 is one of those games you almost have to get from an eBay lot where the seller has no idea what they've got; I don't keep up on retro game gouging prices, but I know that one's up there. It's definitely not worth the going price, but I'm of the opinion that no game is worth $100, much less more. Certainly, they sell new games for prices like that, but if I buy those, it's on sale for about six bucks.

Might I also recommend Super Baseball Simulator 1.000 for its WILD abilities?

Anodyne 2 is great, and you don't even have to play its predecessor to understand what's going on, though said predecessor is like someone slammed Zelda together with Yume Nikki; it's one hell of a ride. SaGa Frontier is a very tough game to recommend... and also to play. My first time, I stumbled through relying heavily on swords (even on characters who can't learn sword skills) and kind of flirting with monsters, with the occasional martial artist thrown in, but didn't even figure out how to learn magic or gun skills. Don't know what it was that kept me coming back, but every time I played through, I learned a bit more, and this most recent time, I even figured out how to efficiently build a very powerful monster, which is not an easy thing to do, since they have so damn many forms and abilities that it's hard to work out what's best. There's a LOT of material on how the game works, but just looking at it is super overwhelming, so if you're ever interested, I can help you weed out what is and isn't important; a guide to the guides, as it were. It's definitely not something everyone will like, but if you can get past its bullshit, there's an incredible world to be discovered, and some really unusual plots and characters. Asellus is my spirit animal, and to have such a thing for someone who's lived a life like mine is a rarity; the closest any other character has gotten would be Terra from Final Fantasy 6, Nina from Breath of Fire 2, and Cecil Harvey from Final Fantasy 4, mostly in descending order.

Well... I don't quite get the wintertime perks, because my lady still has to go to work (can't groom dogs remotely), but that gets my ass some much-needed exercise, so I can't complain too much. I never minded working in the office, but I work a lot better remotely, and interact better, too; there are people with whom I struggled to exchange more than a sentence or two who would now even go so far as to call me sociable.

Not great; just me.

I did manage to read through most of it last night - my reading speed is a bit higher right now, since I've been doing a lot of medical research for a project I'm working on - and it's been pretty interesting; I often find it interesting when someone talks about what games they rank highly (or otherwise) and what's behind it; it's even better when it's not beholden to some arbitrary number, like a top 100 list would be, because those either force things onto or off of the list to make the number. A few notes so far:

+ My grandmother used to love Circus on the Atari 2600, particularly the little calamities that they'd go through when you messed up.

+ I've never really gotten much into the Atari library (my sister, who's about your age was more into that), but the first time I saw Pitfall 2 on Friday Night Arcade, I wondered if it's supposed to be related to Super Pitfall. Yes, they're the same series, but I wonder if Super Pitfall was supposed to be an upscaled port, because of similar elements that you don't see elsewhere in the franchise, like the balloons.

+ I've never been all that into Space Invaders, either, but Majestic Twelve (or Super Space Invaders for Game Gear) are interesting in that they have branching paths, devastating power-ups, BOSS FIGHTS, and of course the best feature: the cattle mutilation bonus stage! Majestic Twelve is part of Taito Legends 2, which I see you have, if you're interested.

+ To me, what makes the NES special (I count the historical significance of things) is its weirdness. Sure, it has a great library (and plenty of not-so-great games, too, like any system), but there are a lot of games where you just enter some kind of zone where you just don't know where the HELL you even are. Games like WURM, Metroid, or even some of the weirder stages of Mario 3 (5-2's lower path in particular) have that dark background and surreal environment that I just love diving deeper and deeper into.

+ My record for longest time between getting a game and beating it is Bart vs. the World, which I just beat this past Thursday, and got almost 31 years ago. Demon slain.

+ It was interesting to hear that the delay is why lightguns don't work with HDTVs; I'd always thought that it was because they were compensating for a curvature that wasn't there because the screen was flat. When I was the faculty advisor for Game Club at the school where I taught, we tried to play Time Crisis on a flat CRT (which apparently is a thing that exist), and it didn't work on that, either.

+ I think I know what game you're referring to with Blaster Master, but I'd argue that Metroid didn't start the genre, either; when you look at the overall map, the bombs and ice beam are right next to each other, the high jump boots aren't far into Norfair, and the morph ball is right at the beginning, so progress doesn't unfold naturally.

+ I wouldn't even put Contra in my top 100 NES games of all time, but I am just nuts, so that tracks anyway.

+ Hot take: I like DuckTales 2 better than the original in almost every aspect but those two weird hidden collectibles that the first one has. Yes, even the soundtrack; Egypt stands up to the moon any day of the week in my book.

Things have been pretty good, honestly; I've been working remotely since the plague, and have reverted to my natural hermit self. I mean, old ladies don't grow beards, but close enough. I've taken up the habit of going for nightly walks after midnight, which is a really interesting time and place to exist, because everything else is asleep, aside from the odd few deer or occasional raccoons fighting in the trees.

Well, the original match was going to be between Live-A-Live and Anodyne 2, but I've been wanting to replay SaGa Frontier for YEARS, especially in October, because the weather's perfect for it, and when I finally did that, it toppled Live-A-Live without even trying. When I went to replay Live-A-Live (don't think I have since the 2.0 translation patch came out), I just... didn't even want to keep going; I got to the ninja chapter and just bailed. As I was playing Anodyne 2, certain of its victory, I though of the other 260 games I have that currently bear an S-rank, and how my capricious ass would choose a different one in many given situations. As for the remake, I never had any intention of playing it, since I don't have a Switch, already have the original, and don't like the stupidly-named HD-2D style because it looks like a goofy pop-up book to me.

I'll be putting that front and center; I have next week off, so that's pretty good timing, too! I've been reevaluating a lot recently, myself, and I've upended a lot of old cornerstones; Live-A-Live is no longer my favorite game or even RPG! I do get interested in hearing other people's thoughts on this or that game, so I'm looking forward to reading what you've put out so far!

I've started a blog!

A couple months ago I decided to undergo a personal project with my game collection. I have a desire to downsize at least a bit, and I realized a good and fun way to help with that is to sample everything I have and come up with a list of what I consider the essential, permanent items. I started making a Facebook post almost daily about the games that made the list, and those posts have been well enjoyed by the people who read them. That has motivated me to start a blog so that I can share with people outside of Facebook. I don't care about getting a lot of views or engagement, this whole thing is for my own benefit and enjoyment. If other people read, that's just a nice bonus!

There are non-gamers who read my posts, so I try to write them in a way that they are at least fairly comprehensible for non-gamers too.

If you take a peek, I recommend starting from the first post and working your way up rather than going backwards. This is in part because I sometimes reference past posts when I write.

Expect to see a new post almost every day!

Link: [Link]

Thank you , I like your collection, ITS HUGE

I wish it too... Put too much rental money on it lol Yup, it was clearly "state of the art" back then, could easily have had spawned a series if more copies were produced and it was more popular... TT