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The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword was an odd beast for many reasons. It originally released in 2011 for the Wii, and had a lot of expectations to live up to, both from fans and from Nintendo's financial department. Unfortunately, it met with a sharply divided reception among both, in no small part because Skyward Sword often got in its own way with its design.

This generation of gaming has been all about reviving and re-releasing old classic games in the name of cashing in on nostalgia, errr, preserving the history of video games. Among the latest games to make a reappearance from the dead are a pair of 16-bit LucasArts classics, namely, Zombies Ate My Neighbors and its lesser-known sequel, Ghoul Patrol, in a downloadable double-pack on all the major consoles and PC. 

I'm something of an anomaly when it comes to fighting games. Okay, I'm something of an anomaly when it comes to a lot of games. Anyway, a new version of my favorite fighting game of all time was released last week. I speak, of course, of Sega's Virtua Fighter 5: Ultimate Showdown, which came out on PS4 and is currently free to PS+ subscribers. 

When Pac-Man finally took off in popularity after its introduction to the US in 1980, it spawned a lot of competition; after all, Pac-Man is still the single most successful arcade game in history. While some were straight up clones of Pac-Man - Atari took Magnavox to court over K.C. Munchkin, their Pac-Man clone for the Odyssey - other games tried to come up with unique twists. 

One of the most recent downloadable titles for from Square Enix is one of their 32-bit classics,  SaGa Frontier. Originally released on PS1 in 1997 in Japan and in early 1998 in the US, it was one of the first games after FFVII that I bought for my new PlayStation. It certainly didn't have quite the razzle-dazzle of FFVII, but it had a style I really liked. Unlike a lot of other Square classics, SaGa Frontier never got a re-release as a Greatest Hits title or a PS1 Classic, though it was popular enough in Japan to be included on their version of the PlayStation Classic. It seemed destined to be lost to the ages, until now. SaGa Frontier Remastered is now available on the PS4 and the Switch, which is remarkable when you consider that when it was originally released, Nintendo and Square weren't on the best terms, as well as PC, iOS, and Android. I chose the Switch version.

Here's a game you've probably never heard of: Nadral, for the Atari 400/800/XL/XE 8-bit computer line. 

Note: This is my second attempt to post this blog. My first attempt, the site ate everything after the introduction to Xanadu. 

Happy BaD! As always, I'm really bad about participating in BaD, my last blog was almost 5 months ago, but I do look forward to the BaD entries of others.

As much as Nintendo struggled with third party support on the N64, especially in Japan, they did have a fair amount of support from one major publisher, Konami. Konami developed and published some of the best output on the system that wasn't made by Nintendo's in-house developers, though they were not without their stinkers.